


Lake Life

by hannah_baker



Series: Lake Life Verse [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Dylan isn't a hockey player, M/M, background Connor/Leon, past Dylan/Connor, past Jordie/Tyler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 11:53:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15460794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannah_baker/pseuds/hannah_baker
Summary: Jordie Benn wants to disappear into the woods after a tough season. He rents an A-frame cabin at Strome Resort for a month, so he and Juice can escape from hockey for a while. He's anticipating a month of rest and relaxation. What he's not expecting is Dylan Strome. What he's not expecting is to fall in love.





	Lake Life

**Author's Note:**

> I realize this is a pairing that literally no one asked for, but one of the things that I love about both Dylan Strome and Jordie Benn is that they’re middle children, playing hockey in the shadow of someone who gets more media attention than they do. There are enough parallels between them that I feel like they could relate really well to each other, and also, they’d be hot together. I just want nice things for them. I’m not sorry. 
> 
> Connor is a bit of a dick in this story, but sometimes I feel like he’d be kind of a dick if he wasn’t getting what he wanted, yanno? He’s not present all that much, but his and Dylan’s relationship did end because Connor cheated on him, just in case that is not something you can abide. 
> 
>  Also, I've never been to Ontario, but I am a Minnesotan who lives for cabin weekends, so there are my creds. 
> 
> For reference, [imagine an A-frame cabin like this](https://www.blessthisstuff.com/stuff/culture/travel/tye-haus-cabin/).

Jordie Benn felt a thousand percent better with his dog in the passenger seat of his car, heading into the wilderness. After a disappointing season spent on planes and in thirty-one cities over the course of seven months, he just wanted some fresh air. He wanted to be all alone.

 

Seven hours east of Montreal, Strome Resort on Lake of Bays in Ontario offered solitude, trees, and fishing with a set of spaced-out A-frame cabins. Jordie was going for a month.

 

He had a bit of a romantic dream of moving into the woods permanently. The water just beyond his door in the summer, getting snowed in during the winter. No one to bother him. He knew that this urge came from hurt, from the bruised heart he’d been carrying around for months. From his jealousy at his little brother’s happiness and success. He looked over to Juice, his nose stuck out the passenger window, and found his calm again. Even when everything sucked, Juice was there.

 

The trip had taken almost nine hours because of traffic, but they’d started early, and summer meant there was still sunshine left in the evening. After a series of more and more questionable roads that he turned down, he pulled into the small parking lot after making more than one wrong turn and got out to check in at the office, another little A-frame cabin slightly larger than the ones for rent.

 

Jordie walked into the office, empty except for a young man, looking fairly early-20’s, hunched over a Nintendo Switch at the small main desk.

 

“You’re Jordie,” he said with a bright, beaming smile, wheeling his chair a bit to situation himself in front of the computer, and clicking the mouse a few times to wake it back up.

 

“Yeah, reservation under Benn. Thanks for being around so late for me to check in.”

 

The young man looked up at him, brown eyes huge and sleepy, looking a little sad almost, as he forced a smile to stay on his lips. “Well, I live here,” he said, motioning to the wall behind him that presumably separated the office from the rest of the cabin, with a wave of his arm. “If you ever need anything, you know where to find me. I’m Dylan, by the way.”

 

“Is this the perfect summer job?” Jordie asked him. He would love this. The outdoors, only a few people to deal with, seclusion. Maybe he was projecting.

 

“It’s the perfect family requirement,” he said, shrugging. “Dylan Strome. Strome Resort.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“It’s not like I’m complaining,” he said, “to be clear.”

 

He walked Jordie through his paperwork. Through his payment, and his pet deposit, and his cabin key.

 

“Let me give you a tour here quick, and then I’ll let you get settled in,” Dylan said after handing Jordie back his credit card. He slipped out from behind the counter. He was casual, in a t-shirt, golf shorts, and Birkenstocks that Jordie could tell he already had a sandal tan from. He led Jordie back out the front of the office cabin, and Jordie’s eyes were glued to Dylan’s broad shoulders, his tiny waist, the way his shorts hugged his butt. He had a mop of brown hair that was doing a bit of a wild thing. “Wanna grab your dog quick and bring him with? We’ll come back for your car.”

 

“Yeah, sure,” Jordie said, letting Juice out of the car. He’d been dozing with his paws resting on the edge of the open window, the air conditioning on inside. It was a waste, but Jordie wasn’t a leave-your-dog-in-a-hot-car kind of guy. “This is Juice,” he said, letting Dylan offer his hands out to his dog, as Dylan bent down to give him pets. Juice wasn’t an exuberant dog, but he wagged his tail and pressed into Dylan’s space. The way other people treated Juice dictated the way Jordie treated them in return. Dylan was sweet and careful with his dog. Respectful.

 

“Let’s go,” he said, standing up, and leading Jordie back down a path. “There are two paths back here, upper and lower, though really, it’s just a circle. You’re on the lower far corner, pretty secluded. I’m sure you talked to my dad about that when you booked. That’s his favorite cabin, no one bothers you.”

 

“Yeah, he did mention that,” Jordie said. That was the entire point.

 

“You’re here for a whole month, that’s intense. Usually, when people are here for a month, it’s like a whole family. That’s their summer thing. You’re not going to get like, stir crazy? Because I can tell you — I get pretty stir crazy.”

 

“Just looking for some time away from the city.”

 

“What do you do? Are you like, a novelist?”

 

“No. You get a lot of those out here?”

 

“Yeah, that’s a common one, especially for single people. Another commone one is like, families without the dad, cause he’s a lawyer or whatever and can’t take time off.”

 

“Wow,” Jordie said. Dylan was just...laying it out there.

 

“I’m not here to judge anyone else’s family, I guess. Mine is just as...whatever.” He rolled his eyes. Jordie didn’t ask. They walked down the path, worn down from walking. They passed four cabins, then there was a gap for a while. Finally, Jordie’s cabin came into view. It wasn’t any bigger than any of the others, but it was a little more expensive, because of the privacy.

 

“Here you are,” Dylan said, pointing. There was a little “5” on the cabin by the door, the face of it that looked out onto the water was almost all windows. “We can do a cabin tour if you want, to go over all the shit that’s in there, or we can just go head down to the dock.”

 

“Dock,” Jordie said, emphatically. “I mean, I’m sure I can figure it out.”

 

“Yeah, you’ll be fine. There’s a welcome binder with info in it, or you can just text me. Let me give you my number,” Dylan said, holding his hand out for Jordie’s phone. Jordie unlocked it and handed it over for Dylan to tap his into. He shot over a text message to himself, so he’d have Jordie’s too. “Just so I know who you are if you text. I’ll be here, like all of June.”

 

“Shit,” Jordie said, as he followed Dylan down to the waterline. The lake was massive and calm, the light breeze barely pushing a ripple across it. “What is this, slave labor?”

 

“It’s fine,” Dylan said. “I get paid, I spend most of my day playing video games. It’s not bad.”

 

“Is this what you’d choose for yourself?” Jordie asked. Dylan had sad eyes, and the way that he talked about his job didn’t make it seem like he really wanted to be here.

 

“This is...kind of punishment to tell the truth. I won’t tell too much of the truth, but honestly, things could be worse for me right now. I’m 'taking it in stride,' as my mom would say.”

 

“Sounds like a bigger story.”

 

“Maybe someday you’ll hear it,” Dylan said. “What did you say you did again? You don’t write books, but you have a month off?”

 

“I’m a consultant,” Jordie said. It was the lie he told to Uber drivers when he didn’t want to have a conversation about being a pro athlete. “I have some time between jobs. Thought I’d take advantage of it.”

 

“Well honestly, you came to a great place. I’m kinda stranded up here, but it is my favorite place in the world.” Dylan moved around this resort with a familiarity that only came with years of experience, comfortable with every inch of the land. “Alright, enough boring stuff. Here are the boats. There are six of them, and ten cabins. Three are good for watersports, three are fishing boats. There’s a sign-up sheet each week for them, and my dad has a system to keep it all fair. I saw some fishing gear in your car. Honestly, don’t get too many early bird fishermen up here, so if you like fishing at the crack of dawn, that’s a great time to go.”

 

Dylan led the way back along the far side of the trail past the other five cabins, explaining the intricacies of the boat signout, how the main office has about a thousand DVDs he could borrow, the best place for a grocery run, and some good local bars around that are in driving distance.

 

Jordie took him up on the DVD offer when they got back to the parking lot, and Jordie and Juice drove down a back path behind the cabins to park the car closer, in a little landing with a “5” on a post to mark his spot. He let Juice off his leash to explore a little as he unpacked his car, and brought everything into the cabin.

 

Jordie wasn’t sure how you’d fit a whole family in this cabin for a month. While it was technically two floors, the upper floor was big enough for a queen sized bed and a set of bunk beds. In the small closet upstairs, he found a blow-up mattress.

 

He dumped his bags on the queen bed as Juice explored the bunk beds along the back wall, and looked out at his view over the lake. It was breathtaking, serene, and felt like home, much more than his condo in Montreal felt. He liked Montreal and he loved hockey. But the past year had been more emotionally wearing than any other season before. His first full NHL season on a team other than his brother’s. Add on top of that a breakup and some poor performance, and Jordie was glad to end the season.

 

Juice nudged at his hand, which was a good reminder that it was dinner time. Jordie and Juice went back downstairs, and Jordie started unpacking Juice’s stuff, setting out food and water bowls in the kitchen for him. He found the welcome guide that Dylan had mentioned and clicked around on the TV in the living room, a gas station sandwich in his hand. He only had enough food for himself until the next morning, so grocery shopping was first on his list of things to do.

 

When Juice finished up eating, Jordie took him down to the dock in the dying light and sat out on the bench at the end of it, his dog at his feet. Jordie listened to the water lap at the edge of the shore and thought it would be worth it to talk to a financial advisor before the season started again, to try to figure out if buying a place like this after he retired would be feasible. If he lived simply, he could stretch his hockey money out until he died, he hoped. Alone. In the wilderness.

 

The prospect of it was both thrilling and disappointing. He already lived alone in Montreal and kind of hated it. But this would be different, wouldn’t it?

 

-

 

In the morning he woke with the sun, Juice restless next to him on the bed. Juice was a terrible bedmate, but Jordie couldn’t help but share with him. He added coffee to his grocery list when he realized there was none in the cabin, and he and Juice headed back down toward the water.

 

“Jordie,” a figure on the dock called, stepping out of one of the boats, fishing pole and tackle box with him. Dylan was an early riser, apparently.

 

Jordie wasn’t good at mornings. “Hey,” he greeted, raising a hand.

 

“Caught a few hungry ones,” Dylan said, waving back. “Threw ‘em back, but still. You can take my word for it.” He put his tackle box down to pet Juice, who had made his way over to Dylan, familiar already. Sometimes Juice could be a weenie around new people, but he seemed to like Dylan. “What are you two up to this morning?”

 

“Just a quick walk before I head into town to hit the grocery store.”

 

“Oh, shit, really? Could I convince you to take me with you? I’m out of coffee, I’m out of Eggos, I’m out of Kraft Dinner.”

 

“Health food only, I see,” Jordie said. It would have been hard to predict the way it felt when Dylan’s face cracked open in a smile, the sound of his laughter. His heart thudded in his chest hard. He felt that first, creeping spark of interest. It had been a while since he'd had that feeling.

 

“Think of it as my last blast before reality. My folks are pretty strict about food. My mom says that ‘real cheese is not a powder,’ but real cheese isn’t really my concern.”

 

“Okay, yeah, give me a half hour to get ready and I’ll pick you up. You can come with.”

 

“Thanks, dude,” Dylan says, his eyes sad again, so soon after that smile. Jordie hated how sad his eyes looked. It was the same sadness he saw when he looked in the mirror.

 

He took Juice back and fished out some chew toys to keep him occupied for a while. Juice was used to being a little nomadic, and Jordie was grateful he was good in new places. “What do you think of Dylan,” he asked his dog from the front door. Juice looked up at him from the couch, his paws holding an antler between them. Juice had sad eyes too. That’s why Jordie had picked him. They were the same, in that way.

 

Juice held his gaze for another beat before going back to his antler. “Thanks for the input, buddy,” Jordie said, closing the door behind him.

 

Dylan slipped into his car easy like he’d done it a thousand times. Jordie could see a note on the door: “Gone grocery shopping, call Dylan if you need anything. Back in an hour.” with his phone number below.

 

Dylan gave good directions into town and tuned Jordie’s radio from static to one of the local stations. When they got to the grocery store, Jordie grabbed a cart, and Dylan grabbed a basket and followed after. Jordie thought he needed basically everything. He bought staples and coffee and stuff for burgers and chicken wraps and pancakes. If he didn’t go to the grocery store again before he left, he wouldn’t be mad about it.

 

“Wanna grab breakfast on the way back? There’s a great waffle place a few miles away from our turn.”

 

“We have perishables,” Jordie said.

 

“We can get takeout waffles,” Dylan said, and Jordie had to admit that that sounded incredible.

 

They got back to the resort forty minutes later. Jordie drove up to the main office and parked. “Maybe you could put your groceries away and come eat with me?”

 

Dylan’s face brightened almost as much as it had when Jordie agreed to the waffle place. “I just need to put milk in the fridge,” he said, grabbing his two grocery bags from the wheel well and racing inside. He was back in literally ninety seconds.

 

Dylan made himself at home in Jordie’s cabin, wrestling with Juice on the floor while Jordie put away his groceries.

 

“This is like, the perfect dog,” Dylan said from the floor. Jordie looked over the other side of the kitchen counter to find Juice in a headlock on the floor with Dylan, panting happily, his tongue out lazily. At the sight of his dad, he licked up Dylan’s face as though to ask _can we keep him?_

 

“You are correct, he is perfect,” Jordie said, putting the tortillas he’d bought for wraps away in one of the cupboards that seemed to be earmarked for a pantry. The rest, thank god, had dishes in them he could use. “He was a rescue. They found him in a box on the side of the road.”

 

“No shit. Someone didn’t want this dog?” Dylan was slowly getting up from the floor, and Juice followed, staying close as Dylan made his way over to the little dining room table where they had deposited their breakfast. Dylan pulled his toward him and grabbed the styrofoam container from the plastic bag and cracked it open.

 

Jordie joined him, noticing that Juice’s face was already in Dylan’s lap. “He’s not going to attack your food or anything. He just doesn’t like being left out.”

 

The diner food smelled incredible. Jordie wasn’t a candle kinda guy, but he’d probably buy a candle that smelled like this. Grease and sugar and fat. His hash browns literally glistened. He could write a poem about this breakfast.

 

It tasted just as good as he listened to Dylan talk about fishing on this lake. Jordie was an amateur, but it sounded like Dylan had been fishing this lake his whole life. “We could go together sometime,” Dylan offered, finally. “I could show you all the good spots and stuff.”

 

Jordie had come here for peace and quiet and to be left alone. But honestly, the prospect of spending more time with Dylan wasn’t a bad one. The kid was growing on him. Jordie said he’d take him up on the offer.

 

Dylan left after breakfast to be in office when a family came for their check-in window, and Jordie hauled his Xbox out of the pile of stuff he’d loaded in the day before. He hooked it up to the TV and settled into the couch where Juice joined him, content to be a couch potato for a little bit.

 

Jordie let himself zone out for the rest of the day. He and Juice walked further into the woods at the edges of the resort, he watched a movie and several episodes of his Game of Thrones re-watch, and took an afternoon nap. He thought about the fantasy novel he’d packed. He could hear families in the other cabins in the late afternoon, but distantly. The world outside of him existed, but he got to be in his own little bubble. He made himself a burger for dinner and fell asleep with Juice next to him, snoring.

 

He felt peace.

 

-

 

Jordie woke up to screaming.

 

The sun poured in his window, bright and more awake than him and Juice combined. Jordie’s dog whined as Jordie rolled over onto his stomach, slowly opening one eye to look out the windows behind his bed. Children. Children below his cabin. Children with a football.

 

“Noooooo,” he whined, pulling his blanket over his head. Juice nosed under there with him, letting him know he wasn’t going to let Jordie sleep. If Juice was awake, Jordie was awake. He peered out his window and watched the screaming children move their game closer to their own cabins.

 

“Fine, fine, fine,” he said when the kids were finally out of sight, slipping out of bed and grabbing a t-shirt to put on. He followed Juice down the stairs and outside, standing on the little deck in front of the cabin as Juice found a spot to pee. Jordie was making coffee in his mind when he saw Dylan dragging a metal canoe out of the woods, no path in sight.

 

Juice was the first to accost him.

 

“What are you doing?” Jordie called to him, already knowing that it was only minutes until he would be helping Dylan carry that canoe wherever it needed to go. Coffee was already on the back burner.

 

“This is the easiest way to get a canoe down here,” Dylan said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He was in long pants in the heat, and a backward baseball cap, a shirt with the arm holes cut out, showing off a lot of skin. “My dad just dropped it off.”

 

“And then...ran away?”

 

Dylan shrugged as he kept dragging the canoe closer to the main path. “I guess.”

 

“And you’re just...dragging it.”

 

“Too heavy to portage.”

 

Jordie heaved a put-upon sigh. He had wanted another day like the day before. Lazy and relaxing. He’d thought about checking out a boat and driving it to the middle of the lake to float for a while with Juice. Maybe bring a book. The fantasy novel hadn’t been cracked yet, but there was still time.

 

Instead, he grabbed the back of Dylan’s canoe, and asked, “where to?”

 

After they got the canoe onto the rack by the edge of the water, Dylan checked his phone. “No check-ins today,” he said. “No texts from guests. Now that this is taken care of,” he said, pointing to the canoe, “I’m done with my chores.”

 

“I’m so proud of you?” Jordie asked.

 

“I’m just saying, you know, if you wanted to like, play some Mario Kart that would be cool. I mean, I know you have this like, wilderness alone guy thing going on, but if you were bored. There are a lot of hours in a day to be alone.”

 

Dylan looked like he knew loneliness to the very core of him. “Can Juice come?”

 

“Sure,” Dylan said, leading the way back to the office cabin. They went in the back door, and while the space that wasn’t office wasn’t huge, it was bigger than the space Jordie had. There was an open living room area, a kitchen, and a hallway that went straight back to what must be the office.

 

“Let me grab my Nintendo,” Dylan said, disappearing down the hallway and ducking into a room that must have been his. The loft was probably where his parents slept, Jordie thought. If they were ever...here.

 

Dylan returned with a mess of cords and electronics, and Jordie could do nothing but keep Juice out of the way as Dylan hooked it up to the TV in the living room. Juice was easily dissuaded, and canvassed the place, sniffing out the cabinet in the kitchen that Jordie was sure the garbage was in. He settled on the couch and watched Dylan fiddle with putting the right cords into the back of the TV, and configuring the controllers for Mario Kart.

 

“Sorry, someday everything will be wireless, but we’re not there yet,” Dylan apologized.

 

“Oh no, you set up a video game system while I was no help at all, and my dog made himself quite at home. How dare you.”

 

“By ‘made himself quite at home,’ you don’t mean he peed, do you?” Dylan asked, looking a little nervous, eyes snapping up to Jordie’s immediately. With a straight on view of his face, Dylan looked pale and almost gaunt. He had bags under his eyes dark like bruises. The second the smile left his face, he looked, and Jordie was being generous here, like a reanimated corpse.

 

“I would hope that if my dog peed in your house, I would be a little more active in resolving that issue.”

 

“Cabin,” Dylan said, not seeming to absorb the rest of what Jordie said. “This is just the cabin. It’s not my house.”

 

“My apologies,” Jordie said, sensing that he’d hit a nerve. “To extend an olive branch, I’ll let you choose your character first.”

 

Juice invited himself up on the couch between the two of them as Dylan selected Princess Rosalie. Jordie picked Toad, because if this wasn’t going to be a competition of manliness, then he might as well.

 

The first race was almost quiet, as Dylan embarrassed Jordie on the track, still feeling out what would be acceptable or not, in terms of swear word yelling. It only took a few rounds for them to warm up, both with the controllers in their hands and the words in their mouths. Dylan’s strategy apparently was physical disruption. Every time Jordie got into first place, Dylan’s shoulder was digging into him, or a hand would come flapping out to slap at him.

 

“You’d do better if you kept your hands on your own controller,” Jordie chided, as Dylan’s hand came in direct contact with Jordie’s controller.

 

“Where’s the fun in that?” Dylan asked as Jordie crossed the finish line first, Dylan coming in fifth as Jordie made a show of no longer needing to hold onto his controller.

 

“The fun is in the winning,” Jordie said. Somewhere in the third race, Juice learned it was dangerous to sit between them on the couch for this activity and was lazing on the floor, licking Dylan’s toes. Day three and Jordie already felt like he had a friend here.

 

-

 

He started day four bright and early, determined not to be ripped out of bed by the screams of children. So early it was still dark. Juice gave him weary eyes from his spot on the bed while he watched Jordie dress when he got up.

 

He’d checked the boat key out from Dylan the night before since the office didn’t technically open until nine, and Jordie headed down to the dock with fishing gear in hand. He didn’t have any really good stuff. Just enough to get along. Stuff he’d, embarrassingly, had to buy for this trip. Usually, when he was fishing it was a friend’s boat and a friend’s supplies. He dumped his stuff in the boat, cranked the key, and slowly (because he didn’t one hundred percent know what he was doing, let’s be honest) crept away into the deep, still water of the lake.

 

The air was cool and dewy and the surface of the lake was smooth like glass. He made sure the lights on his boat were on, and just cruised around, realizing that he didn’t really intend on settling on a fishing spot. He liked the slow crawl of the little boat scooting through the water. He liked the sounds of animals on the lake in the early morning. He saw a few other boats as he made his way, an uncharted path through the water. He waved.

 

This was the opposite of hockey season. The opposite of strained muscles and everything always kind of smelling like sweat. The opposite of sitting on a bench, or a bus seat, or a plane seat. The opposite of knowing exactly what he had in his fridge because it was Monday, and his meal service had dropped off exactly one week of meals for him that day.

 

With the water so still and smooth, he could imagine what it would be like as ice. He let his mind wander into a fictional future where he bought the cabin he was staying in and moved in permanently, and Dylan became an everpresent force in his life (it was already hard not to imagine Dylan around the edges of his wilderness fantasies).

 

He and Dylan would shovel off enough of the lake to plan shinny on, just skates and sticks and gloves. Hats with floppy ears. Dylan in an overlarge sweatshirt that maybe had BENN emblazoned on the back of it. A smile on his face. He could already imagine what Dylan’s cheeks would look like wind chafed, and when Jordie pulled himself slowly out of his daydream, he finally realized what exactly was going on here.

 

He had a crush on Dylan.

 

And suddenly, he felt a lot more awake than he usually did at five-thirty in the morning.

 

He watched the sun rise from his boat, then pulled it back into the dock, legitimately using maps on his phone to find the resort again. He dragged his unused fishing stuff back up to his cabin and had to walk all the way up to the loft to get his first glimpse of Juice, who was sprawled out, unashamedly, across Jordie’s pillows.

 

Jordie looked at his watch, then crawled back into bed. He didn’t want to think anymore. At least Juice had kept it warm for him. 

 

-

 

When he woke again, it was almost noon, and he had two text messages from his brother on his phone.

 

_Hey._

_How’s camp?_

 

Jordie ignored them. He got Juice up and ready to go for the day, and took a shower in a much-too-small shower stall. That was it — that was the thing he would be glad to leave when his month was up. The shower.

 

He had a choice, at 11:45 in the morning, for making breakfast or lunch, so he rode the high from the day before and whipped out his pancake mix.

 

He spent almost a half hour flipping pancakes, and took a photo of them that he realized...he had no one to send to. He had the urge to post it to Instagram but restrained himself. He hadn’t checked social media once since he’d checked in at the resort, and he was trying to see if he could make it at least halfway through his stay before breaking.

 

He didn’t touch the app.

 

Instead, he opened his text thread with “Resort Dylan,” right below the thread from Jamie. So far, the only thing in it was “Jordie 5” which Dylan had sent to himself.

 

He chose his pancake photo and labored over a message. “What do you think, J,” he asked his dog. Juice looked up from his spot on the couch, where he had wasted approximately zero seconds after waking up from a very long night’s sleep to go back to lounging. “Something simple, or like, something funny?” Juice put his head back down on the couch.

 

“Ouch, buddy. Aren’t you supposed to think I’m always funny?”

 

He settled on _not as good as yesterday’s, but I’m sure they’ll still work_. and hit send.

 

It was about five seconds until he got a response. Several responses in separate texts, as though Dylan just couldn’t wait to finish his thought before he needed Jordie to know it. It started with a heart eyes emoji.

 

_This better be an invite btw_

_Because I had a pop tart for breakfast_

_And you know what that’s doing to my insides._

 

Jordie had no idea what a pop tart would do differently to someone’s insides than pancakes would. It was carbs and sugar. Still, he typed back. He hadn’t been consciously thinking of it as an invitation, but that was what he really wanted, wasn’t it? To see Dylan again as soon as possible?

 

_Plenty of leftovers if you want ‘em._

 

It felt like Dylan had barely typed “ _be right down_ ” before he was walking in Jordie’s front door without so much as a knock. Juice didn’t even greet him, which was a level of comfort that Jordie’s dog had with basically just Jordie’s parents, who he lived with over the previous hockey season.

 

“Oh my gosh the two families in the cabins closest to mine have small children, save me,” he declared, holding his hands out for the plate Jordie was taking out of the cupboard for him. He dished up several more pancakes for Dylan than he’d served himself, and Dylan covered them with butter and syrup, then headed over to sit in the same seat he’d been at the day before.

 

“I woke up to screaming children yesterday. I have sympathy for you.” Jordie joined him at the table, and Dylan ran through the families currently checked in. It was a Friday, which meant the cabins would be full by the end of the day. He learned a little more about what Dylan’s job entailed, which included cleaning the cabins between guests, which he mercifully got a full day to do in most cases.

 

Jordie had turned the TV on to cook to, and there was a cooking show happening in the background that filled up the little gaps in their conversation. Jordie learned Dylan’s opinion on feta (“the only acceptable goat cheese”) and found out that Dylan really wanted a dog of his own (“a German Shepherd or something”). He found out that if he could keep Dylan animated and engaged, he could keep the smile on his face. It felt like Dylan was a shark. Jordie had to keep him moving.

 

After Dylan finished his food, he made no moves to get up or leave. He flipped through Instagram on his phone (which Jordie was distantly jealous of) and wandered over to the couch. He poked at Jordie’s Xbox controller, checked out the DVDs Jordie grabbed from the office. He sat on the couch by Juice and put his feet up on the coffee table.

 

Jordie wasn’t sure if it was because Dylan felt so comfortable with him, or because Dylan felt so comfortable with this space — the cabins that were basically an extension of his own.

 

Jordie wasn’t about to kick him out though. He sat next to him on the couch and flipped the channel to a network playing old reruns of Shark Tank, and they sat together for a while, making fun of the products people were hawking.

 

Dylan yawned and stretched, settling deeper into the couch as the apparent marathon of small business pitches came at them. As Dylan fell asleep, he shifted to rest against Jordie, warm and heavy. Juice’s face was resting in Dylan’s lap, Dylan’s hand on the back of Juice’s neck. Jordie wished he had a picture of that moment.

 

He wished that, back in Montreal, he had felt this feeling even once. The warm contentment of looking at your situation and thinking, _I wouldn't change a thing_. There was always something off in Montreal. Something that he was missing, or something that he hated.

 

But in that moment, Jordie had the warm feeling of a crush settling into his stomach, lighting his nerves on fire. He had the sound of a lake lapping at the shore lulling him to sleep at night. He had his best friend at his side again after a season away from him. He didn’t feel the ache in his chest that had been present for the better part of the year. The feeling of not being good enough that he could feel in the very core of his bones.

 

In that cabin, he felt like he was enough.

 

Of course, it didn’t last. Forty-five minutes of Dylan’s soft snoring passed in a hurry, and suddenly, his phone was going off like crazy. Dylan scrambled awake reaching for it.

 

“Shit, I have a check-in window,” he said, disorientedly as he tried to sit up from his place resting against Jordie. He shut off his reminder that was still ringing, a blush rising on his face. “I’m, uh, sorry, dude. For um—“

 

Jordie didn’t want him to apologize. He wanted Dylan to settle back into his side. “Not a problem,” he said instead, catching Dylan’s hand as he got up from the couch to get his full attention. “Seriously.”

 

Dylan bit his lip, which was a good look on him if Jordie had anything to say about it. “Thanks,” he said, and slid out the door, just as easy as he came in.

 

-

 

Over the course of the week, Dylan popped up daily. Sometimes multiple times daily. Every time Jordie saw him, it felt like magic to watch Dylan’s face go from the sallow look he carried when not interacting with people to the face-of-the-sun smile he gave Jordie. He always had a story to tell Jordie. Every day, Jordie learned a little more about what Dylan did all day, which broke down to basically whatever was necessary.

 

Tuesday had been a long day. Dylan was busy cleaning multiple checkouts (which Jordie learned he was very fastidious about) and Jordie realized toward the end the day that he was just waiting for the part of his day when he got to hang out with Dylan. As though that was a feature in the brochure for this place. “Spend one-on-one time with a handsome younger man who is a great conversationalist, and just broken enough to trigger your desire to take care of him.”

 

Jordie would have happily paid extra for it.

 

He’d spent the last twenty minutes in one of the Adirondack chairs on his deck trying to brainstorm ideas of how to get Dylan to come over. He could cook him dinner, but that seemed pretty forward. He could tell him Juice missed him. Maybe a little on the nose.

 

He opened a text message thread that was now packed full. Quiet today though.

 

There was a firepit in front of every cabin, and Dylan had been called away from their hangout the other day to help one of the couples staying in a cabin on the other side of the loop get theirs lit. Dylan had made fun of them for not knowing how to but went dutifully anyway. He typed a message.

 

_Can you show me how to light a fire in the fire pit?_

 

It was perfectly designed. An inside joke, a request for his presence, and a genuine plea for help.

 

He could basically see Dylan responding to it before he even hit send.

 

A string of fire emojis. Then:

 

_See you in two point five seconds_

 

Jordie had just enough time to pick some weird leaves off of Juice’s coat before Dylan came bounding down the path, his long, lanky limbs a sight for sore eyes. Jordie literally saw him less than twenty-four hours ago, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of gladness he got when he saw Dylan. The more they hung out, the more he liked Dylan’s goofy humor and dark eyes. He liked the moments when Dylan couldn’t breathe because he was laughing so hard, but also began to welcome the ache that came with Dylan showing him his darkness. They’d had a brief, two-minute conversation the day before about their respective broken hearts. Jordie thought Dylan was maybe a little too close to his to talk about it yet.

 

Dylan hugged him, a greeting too short for Jordie to properly savor, before breezing past him into the cabin. “There’s a cabinet over here,” Dylan explained, opening the closet that housed the combo washer dryer, and reached up to the very top shelf where he pulled down a firestarter and a package of matches. “It’s supposed to be self-serve, you know.”

 

“I’m sure that was the intention,” Jordie said, following Dylan back out to the little fire pit. Jordie had found firewood alongside the cabin and pre-stacked it, but Dylan just shook his head and got to work rearranging the logs into a little tent.

 

“I’m glad you texted because clearly, you were in need of a lot of help. This is embarrassing. What will your son think of you? You built this in front of him?” He gestured to Juice, who was watching from his spot on the deck.

 

“There is a reason why I rented a cabin at a resort instead of a campground if we’re going to be really honest here.”

 

“The truth comes out,” Dylan said, lighting the firestarter. “Just for the record, I could build you a fire with just some logs and newspaper and matches. My dad just likes me to do it this way to show guests how easy it is for them to do it themselves.”

 

“That’s very impressive and manly.”

 

“Trying to make someone a good husband here,” he said, his grin crooked, sadness coming through his joke.

 

“My only marketable husband skill is light car maintenance.”

 

“Like, changing oil?”

 

“Exactly like changing oil,” Jordie said, as they sat down on the tree stumps placed around the fire.

 

“Well, I don’t know how to change my oil.”

 

“And I don’t know how to build a fire.”

 

“Sounds like our husband skills match up pretty well then.” It was barely nine, the sky still holding onto its brightness. Jordie could see the blush rising high on Dylan’s cheeks, his eyes meeting Jordie’s for the first time without his usual sadness. There was something else there now, deeper than sadness. Different than sadness.

 

“Yeah,” Jordie said, so quiet it was almost a breath, their eyes locked. Jordie wasn’t sure if Dylan was exceptionally friendly to everyone, or if the way he acted around Jordie was special. If he just wanted a pal, or something more. But there was electricity between them. He could almost feel it crackle.

 

And then it broke. “So who do you like for the Stanley Cup next year,” Dylan said, out of nowhere. Not a single word about sports had been spoken between them, and Jordie had been glad for it. He felt like he just missed the bottom stair. Like stepping through thin ice into freezing water.

 

“Um, well, basically anyone but the Caps, I think,” he said, trying not to project the anxiety he felt. He liked the bubble he had going with Dylan, where he didn’t have to be Professional Hockey Player Jordie Benn. He could just be Jordie. He didn’t want to lose that.

 

“Hate the Caps?”

 

“Just hard to streak,” Jordie said, shrugging.

 

“I gotta say the Leafs, cause it’s the law.”

 

“Did you come out of your mom wearing a Leafs jersey?” He’d already seen plenty of Leafs t-shirts on Dylan so far.

 

“I think it actually gestated on me. More important than the like, placenta.”

 

Jordie burst out laughing. “I really didn’t think I would hear you say the word ‘placenta’ tonight.”

 

“I think I might always be a little more than you bargained for.” And then the question he wasn’t looking forward to at all came: “Who do you root for?”

 

“I grew up in BC, so the Canucks when I was a kid. I work in Montreal now, so, you know, it’s a little easier to like the home team. Good camaraderie and community and stuff.” The community of actually _being_ on the team.

 

“The Habs, huh? Kinda weak D this year,” Dylan said, picking at the box of matches he still had in his hand. Jordie wondered if he knew, and was just holding out on him. He waited a beat, but Dylan still didn’t seem to realize who he was. That was something to be grateful for at least.

 

Jordie sighed. “Hard to argue with that. You want a beer or something?” He was already getting up.

 

Dylan followed him inside. “I didn’t mean to like, rag on your team. I like the Leafs after all.”

 

Jordie couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah. You do like the Leafs,” he said. He pulled beers out of his fridge and opened them with the STROME RESORT fridge magnet bottle opener before handing one over to Dylan. They had already established that Dylan didn’t give a shit about what kind of beer he was drinking so he didn’t try to talk about it.

 

“You like any other sports?” Jordie asked, trying to get out of the hot water that was a conversation about hockey.

 

“Baseball,” Dylan said, “Blue Jays.”

 

“I played baseball pretty seriously as a kid,” Jordie said, leaning back a little against the fridge, as Dylan settled a hip against the edge of the countertop.

 

“With those shoulders, I believe it.” It felt like flirting. It felt like sticking a fork into a socket. Electrifying.

 

“I think you could handle swinging a bat yourself,” Jordie said, taking a long, obvious look at Dylan. When he made it back up to Dylan’s eyes he watched him bite his lip again, the mystery look in his eyes from earlier becoming a little more clear. At least Jordie hoped. He thought it looked like _want_.

 

“I was never very good at batting. Or catching. Or paying attention in the outfield for long enough to be useful.” 

 

Jordie believed all of those claims. “Short attention span?”

 

“I think you already know that. That’s why I played hockey as a kid instead. More stuff happening. Harder to get distracted.”

 

“There’s something nice about how slow baseball is. A pastime. That summer sunshine. The occasion where you need to snap into action. Fits and lulls.”

 

“More of a baseball man than a hockey man then,” Dylan assessed.

 

“In the summer at least,” Jordie said, and it didn’t feel like lying. He didn’t want to lie to Dylan. He just also didn’t want to talk about hockey. Most importantly, he didn’t want to change in Dylan’s eyes. He liked that Dylan had decided he liked Jordie for who he was, and not what he did.

 

Juice scratched at the door to come in, and for the first moment since the two of them were reunited, Jordie had completely forgotten about him. “Shit, I wasn’t even thinking about him. I left him alone by the fire.”

 

They headed back outside where Jordie apologized to his dog, rubbed his ears and scratched his neck under his collar. Juice didn’t think anything was wrong. When he stood back up, a warm hand gripped his shoulder. He turned in Dylan’s grip, but Dylan didn’t drop his hand. He kept it there. Steady. 

 

“It’s okay. He’s too smart to go by the fire.”

 

“It just felt...disorienting,” he said, realizing how close he was to Dylan. How, in the dying light of the day, the flames danced softly on Dylan’s skin. “Juice is usually my first thought.”

 

“And he wasn’t for a second,” Dylan said, eyebrows furrowed like he was trying to solve a math problem.

 

Jordie nodded. He took the teeniest step forward. One of his hands naturally found the curve of Dylan’s waist.

 

“So what was?” Dylan asked, his voice quiet since they were so close.

 

“Dylan Strome,” Jordie said, both incredulous and as a genuine answer to the question as he leaned just far enough in to kiss him.

 

It was a testing kiss, teasing. It was a kiss that asked Dylan to ask for more. Dylan stepped into it, wrapping his arms around Jordie’s neck. Jordie got a better grip on his waist, and suddenly they were flush together, and Jordie couldn’t think about anything outside of how much he never wanted to stop touching Dylan. They were so close that Jordie could feel Dylan’s phone buzz in his pocket.

 

Dylan ignored the first buzz from his phone. When the second came, they finally broke apart. Dylan was breathing hard, mouth open in disbelief. “Fuck,” he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket. He put one hand on Jordie’s chest, as though to keep him there, as he checked his texts.

 

“Fuck,” he said again. “Cabin two is out of toilet paper.”

 

“Goddamnit, cabin two,” Jordie said, a little bloom of pride in his chest when Dylan laughed.

 

“Fuck those guys. I mean, they’re like, fifty percent small children, but fuck ‘em.”

 

“Get it together, small children.”

 

Dylan looked up at him from his phone, “fuck, I have to go.”

 

“It’s probably pretty obvious to tell you that I don’t want you to, right?”

 

“Ditto,” Dylan said, stepping back a little and shaking out his hands a little. “Shit. That was good, right?”

 

“Yeah,” Jordie agreed. He hadn’t fully recovered from that kiss yet, it was so good. He’d had zero chemistry with the last person he kissed and it set this in stark relief. “It was good.”

 

“Good. Okay. Good,” Dylan said, so charming in how earnest his reaction was Jordie wanted to eat him up. “I’m going to go get some toilet paper, then I’m going to come back and help you put the fire out safely. Do you need any toilet paper?”

 

“Romantic.”

 

“A real question though,” Dylan said, taking another step back from Jordie, like he had to resist the tractor beam back to Jordie’s lips.

 

“A real answer: I’m good.”

 

“Perfect. See you in like, twenty.” He paused just long enough for Jordie to reel him back in by the hand and kiss him one more time.

 

“See you in twenty.”

 

Jordie grabbed another beer and sat by the fire, phone a dead weight in his hand. He didn’t know what to even use his phone for if it wasn’t to scroll Instagram. He opened up his messages and picked the most recent string of texts he’d been ignoring - his brother, checking in. Finally, he had something to say.

 

_Camp is good. Better than expected. Trying to stay off my phone. Love you._

 

He let Juice inside to lay on the couch while he monitored the fire until Dylan got back. Dylan was right — he didn’t really know how to put it out.

 

When Dylan rounded the corner after fifteen minutes that had felt like at least four hours to Jordie, he had a roll of toilet paper in his hand.

 

“Just, you know, in case,” he said, tossing it to Jordie. Jordie caught it and set it down on the log he’d been sitting on, watching as Dylan grabbed a bucket from the side of the cabin by the firewood.

 

They hadn’t put any new logs on since they started the fire, and it was almost burned out on its own. Jordie watched as Dylan walked down to the edge of the lake to scoop up some water. He doused the fire, stirred it up with a stick laying by the pit, and made a big show of dusting his hands off. Jordie was very, very into watching Dylan work. He was so comfortable in his own body, so confident that it would just do what he asked of it. Jordie had a complicated relationship with his own body. He was a little jealous.

 

When Dylan made his way back to him, Jordie snagged him by the waist, drawing him in. He rested his forehead against Dylan’s, content to be this close to him. Dylan’s eyes fluttered shut, his hands coming up to Jordie’s jawline, exploring his beard a little. They didn’t say anything. Just breathed the same air for a bit.

 

“Do you want to come in?” Jordie asked, quiet as the night that had fallen around them.

 

Dylan paused. “First of all, yes, absolutely. Of course, I want to.”

 

“But…” Jordie asked, hearing where that sentence was going.

 

“But. But I need to take things slow. I need to be careful. No matter what this is, I need to be more careful than I’ve been before.” The weight of Dylan’s sad eyes hung behind that story.

 

“Yeah,” Jordie said. “Whatever you need.”

 

Dylan pressed up just enough to kiss Jordie again, deep and strong. Jordie was already beginning to get a taste for Dylan’s lips, was starting to map out the familiarity of them.

 

When he pulled away, Jordie got yet another smile. “Goodnight, Jordie.”

 

“Night,” he said, and watched Dylan disappear back down the path to his cabin.

 

-

 

Jordie woke to the sound of his front door slamming shut. Juice bolted out of bed for once to investigate. Jordie could have sworn he locked the front door, but then he heard confident footsteps through his living room and realized how stupid his confusion was. Of course Dylan invited himself in at the crack of dawn.

 

Juice came prancing back upstairs, Dylan in tow. Jordie opened his eyes slowly, expecting a rosy-cheeked happy version of the boy he’d finally kissed the night before. Instead, he was greeted with a whole different expression. Dylan’s face was twisted with confusion and anger.

 

“What happened?” Jordie asked, sitting up to get out of bed. Dylan held his hand out for Jordie to stay put, so he did, his own confusion building.

 

“I was on the internet this morning,” Dylan said, and Jordie’s heart dropped. He could mean so many different things, but Jordie’s gut told him it could only be one thing. _The_ thing. “I was looking up your team, the Habs, so I could figure out something nice to say about them. I felt like I hit a nerve last night when I trashed them and um. I get it now.”

 

“Dylan,” Jordie started.

 

“You’re Jordie fucking Benn. You _are_ defense for the Habs. I can’t believe I fucking said — right in front of you — right to your face.”

 

Jordie did get out of bed then, taking a couple steps toward Dylan. The room felt very still around them. Even Juice could sense something was happening and stayed where he was, back on the bed.

 

“Oh my god please put your beautiful chest away right now, I’m also mad at you.”

 

“Oh,” Jordie said, a little surprised. He fished a t-shirt off the floor and pulled it on, per Dylan’s request.

 

“For lying to me,” Dylan clarified.

 

“Oh,” Jordie said again. It felt heavier this time. “I didn’t know we would become friends. I didn’t know we’d become…”

 

“I just feel stupid,” Dylan said, covering his face in his hands. “Just some northwoods lake boy summer fling.” It cut Jordie, to think that Dylan could think that Jordie would feel that way.

 

“Dyl,” Jordie breathed, finally closing the distance between them, taking Dylan’s face his hands, gentle. “I'm sorry that my actions made you feel that way. Caused you pain. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to bring it up. To talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about playing hockey, or my shitty season, or any of it. I came up here alone for a month to not think about hockey at all. And then here you were, and you wanted to hang out with me because you wanted to hang out with _me_ , and not some hockey player. I don’t get to feel that very often. I didn’t want to let that go. I know that’s shitty. I’m sorry.”

 

It was Dylan’s turn to say, “Oh,” brows knit, chewing over Jordie’s apology. He settled into Jordie, wrapping his arms around his waist, and Jordie pulled him close. It felt like he’d accepted his apology.

 

“I’ll tell you anything you’d like,” Jordie offered.

 

“I’m not going to make you talk about hockey,” Dylan said, and if Jordie had a ring in his pocket at that moment, he would have proposed. Instead, he kissed him on the forehead.

 

“Do you have time for me to make you some eggs?” Jordie asked instead and felt Dylan nod against his neck. It had been a week since he checked into Strome Resort, and he could already feel each second ticking away. He so desperately wanted to freeze time. Soak up as much Dylan as he could. 

 

Downstairs in the kitchen, Jordie made coffee first, then cobbled together some halfway respectable omelets that Dylan looked impressed with. They put on Sports Center because it was mainly baseball coverage and they both agreed on that heartily.

 

“Remember when I told you to your face I thought that the Habs defense was weak this year, and you didn’t throw me straight into the lake? How did you not throw me straight into the lake?” Dylan asked, between bites. They were settled on the couch together, the three of them, a box fan pointed straight at them. The cabin technically had air conditioning, but it was weak. The sun was still working on rising all the way, and Jordie was just trying to get through his breakfast.

 

“Honestly, caught me pretty off guard,” Jordie said. “And then when I recovered, it was funny. At least I know you don’t just like me for my hockey.”

 

“I like you for your shoulders, and your eyes, and apparently your bare chest,” Dylan said. And then as an afterthought: “And like, your personality.” Jordie cracked up, nuzzled into Dylan’s neck.

 

“Yeah, I like you for your personality too.”

 

Dylan spent the day running around the resort, largely with Jordie and Juice in tow, doing loads of laundry for bed sheets and towels and delivering them across the cabins, handling a checkout, taking breaks to shoot hoops at the little half-court by the grills, trying not to trip over Juice who was a very involved basketball player. Stealing kisses whenever they thought they could get away with it, which was often.

 

Dylan had two new families checking in that evening, so he sent Jordie back to his own cabin. He needed the time to not be breathing the same air as Dylan. To not feel so imbued. To step back from what he was doing. He took a shower, made himself some dinner, and sprawled out on the couch to watch The Big Sick, which he had never gotten around to seeing in the theater, but was much heavier than he expected.

 

He thought about Dylan. He was already too attached. He couldn’t help it. It’s not like you can explain to your heart the fact that this was a temporary situation. That he’d be going to spend the rest of his summer back home in Victoria, and that after that, he’d be heading back to Montreal. That he had no idea what Dylan would be doing after the summer, but he’d probably be at the resort for the duration.

 

His heart didn’t give a shit. It just beat in double time when Dylan was in his space. He felt it swell when Dylan smiled. When he saw the way Juice and Dylan got along, it made him want to cry. It felt perfect in every way but the logistical ones. Perfect was a dangerous word. Perfect got his heart broken. Jordie had thought Tyler Seguin was perfect at one point.

 

For the first time in a long time, thinking about Tyler didn’t make him want to die though, so that was progress.

 

Dylan came back just before the movie ended, letting himself in as normal, and fitting himself onto the couch under Jordie’s feet and Juice’s muzzle. It was past eight, and Jordie was sleepy from being up so early.

 

“We should go camping,” Dylan said through a yawn. Jordie yawned back at him.

 

“We are camping.”

 

“You are in a very nice resort cabin if I do say so myself, with air conditioning and cable TV. You are not camping.”

 

“Again, there is a reason for that.”

 

“Which is?”

 

“I didn’t grow up with it, so I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

 

“You pitch a tent and then sleep in it. It’s not complicated. Plus, to review, you don’t need to have skills, because I have skills.”

 

“Oh no,” Jordie said propping himself up on his elbows to get a good look at Dylan. “I’m not talking my way out of this am I?”

 

Dylan shook his head, a smile on his face. “No, you are not.”

 

Jordie sighed, getting up just enough to put Dylan in a headlock, while Dylan went to tickle Jordie’s sides. Juice got up in a huff and wandered upstairs to nap in peace. He’d claimed the lower bunk as his own, and Jordie knew where to find him if he wasn’t under his feet.

 

Jordie had different things to be concerned about at the moment, wrestling with Dylan until he’d gotten him settled, square on his lap straddling him, right where he’d wanted him. Dylan’s hands found the back of Jordie’s neck, playing with the hair that was getting shaggy there.

 

“Hi,” he said, leaning forward to touch his forehead to Jordie’s.

 

Jordie pulled him closer by his hips, just millimeters, but it felt like an important distinction. He looked at Dylan’s face, relaxed and happy. Relaxed and happy wasn’t something Jordie was too familiar with when it came to Dylan. If he seemed relaxed, his sad eyes came out. If he looked happy, it was an active happy. He was laughing or aiming a smile at Jordie.

 

Now, his smile was easy. At some point over the course of the week, the bags under his eyes calmed down. They weren’t gone, but he looked healthier. Jordie was very, very into that.

 

“Hi, yourself,” Jordie returned, because this moment wasn’t about talking, and they both knew it.

 

When they finally pressed their lips together, there was magic in their kiss. Still brand new and exciting, sparking with energy and heat, but they had enough experience kissing each other now so that their fumbles and missteps were minimized. They didn’t have a real rhythm yet. They were both so hungry for it.

 

Jordie had probably ten years of kissing experience on Dylan, so he let Dylan lead, giving himself over to Dylan’s hands on his jaw, hands in his hair, hands running over his shoulders which Jordie could tell Dylan wasn’t kidding about being into. When put to his own devices, Dylan was a teasing kisser more than a bruising one. Jordie had to admit there was an art to it if the way his body was reacting to it was any indication.

 

Jordie kept his own hands respectably on Dylan’s hips, or on his lower back, over his shirt. Dylan had requested taking things slow. Jordie was going to listen.

 

When Dylan broke away Jordie could feel it in his lips still, buzzing with the ghost of the kiss. Dylan was panting, his eyes black with lust. He dropped his forehead to Jordie’s shoulder.

 

“I need to calm down,” he said, still breathing hard. Jordie was too, his body very caught up in what they’d been doing. Jordie wasn’t sure if it was because Dylan was younger than him, or because Dylan was still nursing a broken heart, but he was the first person in years that Jordie hadn’t slept with basically right away. He found he liked not jumping straight to sex. There was anticipation there that Jordie hadn’t felt probably since he was Dylan’s age.

 

Jordie scratched up and down Dylan’s back and received some happy hums as Dylan kept breathing into his neck. He held on tight to Dylan and shifted them just enough to lay them down on the couch, Dylan tucked against Jordie, his head on Jordie’s chest.

 

The movie was just hitting credits, and Jordie realized he’d paid attention to about twenty minutes of it. He couldn’t care. “I like this,” he told Dylan, rubbing his back gently, Dylan’s plain white t-shirt soft and well-loved. Dylan wasn’t built like a professional athlete and Jordie wanted to savor his body, made from hard work running a resort instead of in a gym. Jordie felt so bored with his own body, his muscles so predictable, so designed. Jordie felt like a plant grown on a farm compared to the wild vine of Dylan Strome.

 

Dylan didn’t really respond, just hummed his agreement, one hand fisting in the side of Jordie’s shirt as they settled together. Jordie flipped back to a cooking show to have something on in the background, but he wasn’t paying attention to it. All he could think about was the way that Dylan felt on top of him. He could feel every one of Dylan’s breaths. And as Dylan’s breathing finally slowed to a deep, even rhythm, so did Jordie’s.

 

-

 

Jordie woke hours later, stiff from not moving. Dylan was heavy and asleep on him, just where he’d left him. He ran a hand through Dylan’s hair gently. “Hey sweetheart,” he said, voice soft. “We fell asleep.”  
  
  
Dylan made a grumpy noise in the back of his throat, upset at being woken up. Jordie looked at his watch. It was almost one. “It’s late.”  
  
“Damnit,” Dylan said, trying to coordinate his body enough to stand up, but he wasn’t quite ready for it. Jordie’s hands steadied his hips.  
  
  
“You want me to walk you back?” Jordie asked, not letting himself hope that Dylan would stay tonight if he’d gone home the day before.  
  
  
“I don’t want to make the walk,” Dylan complained.  
  
  
“You can stay here,” Jordie said. “You know I don’t want you to leave.”  
  
  
“I need to set my alarm for early tomorrow.”  
  
  
“I can wake up with you, or fall back asleep. Neither option bothers me.”  
  
  
“Really? You’ll really let me stay?” His eyes were sleepy, and as he stood up, Jordie could see how heavy his limbs were, how bone-tired he was.  
  
  
“You need to fall back asleep immediately,” Jordie said, flipping the TV off and leading Dylan upstairs. Juice didn’t stir from the lower bunk. He helped Dylan out of his jeans, and Dylan pulled his t-shirt off, unselfconscious in his exhaustion. He was lean and summer-tan, and when he crawled into the side of the bed Jordie usually slept on, he didn’t make him move. Jordie just stripped down himself, and scooted under the covers, happy when Dylan shifted closer to him. Jordie happily curled around Dylan’s back, warm in the cool summer night.  
  
  
Dylan scrambled off the next morning to be in his own bed when his dad came to check in on the resort and the boats. He texted Jordie updates through the morning, when it sounded like his dad was going to stick around for a little while to help Dylan chop some firewood (Jordie was very upset that he didn’t get to see Dylan swing an axe), and they didn’t have to talk about how Jordie was going to stay out of the way.  
  
  
Dylan had been a little dodgy about his family so far, but Jordie could tell something was up that he wasn’t ready to talk about. Plus, if running this show was punishment for Dylan, than Jordie was pretty sure that his dad finding out that he was hanging out with Jordie — who was questionably older than Dylan — probably wouldn’t bode well for Dylan. Or Jordie for that matter. He wasn’t getting kicked out early if he could help it.  
  
  
He decided to go into town for lunch, getting into his car for the first time in over a week. He liked that feeling. The feeling of knowing that his car wasn’t a daily essential in this life. He didn’t have to get in the car to see Dylan, or take Juice on a hike, or get exercise, or see a beautiful view.  
  
  
He got a cheeseburger and a beer at one of the bars Dylan had pointed out to him when they’d gone on their grocery run, and finally cracked open his big fantasy novel. His only goal was to finish it by the end of the summer, and June always felt like the very beginning to him. He felt a little guilty being away from Juice for a single second when this was their boys trip of togetherness, but it was good to get a little space from the cabin. To remember the outside world existed, even if it just affirmed his current disdain.  
  
  
He finished his meal and sat in his car for a bit, trying to figure out what his next move was. Should he explore the town a little, or head back? Instead he pulled his phone out and dialed his brother’s number.  
  
  
“He lives,” Jamie greeted him, his shy voice big and happy. Though Jordie’s life had been kind of shitty over the past year and a half, Jamie’s hadn’t been. Jamie had career success and a girlfriend he loved, who was currently dragging him all over North America.  
  
  
“I’m alive in the woods of northern Ontario, and I’m basically as happy as I could be right now, to be honest.”  
  
  
“Oh yeah? Communing with nature doing you good? I thought you’d go stir-crazy up there all alone for sure.”

 

“First of all, I’m not alone, I have Juice,” Jordie argued, burying the lead. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Jamie about Dylan, but he’d called him, and that must mean something.  
  
  
“Juice doesn’t count,” Jamie said. Jamie was not a dog person, and Jordie would never forgive him for it.

 

“I’m not all alone.”

 

“Jordie, please, please tell me that Tyler isn’t up there with you,” Jamie said, his voice quiet and serious all of the sudden. It wasn’t criticism that Jordie could feel offended by. He’d had a hard time quitting Tyler. They’d both made some poor decisions in the wake of Jordie being traded. Broke each other’s hearts. Kept coming back for more beyond the statute of limitations on a breakup. Jamie was still friends with Tyler, but everyone knew that Tyler and Jordie were a bad match.  
  
  
When Jordie used to think of why he and Tyler originally had to break up — the trade that had taken Jordie to Montreal — he considered it the worst thing that had ever happened to him. He considered quitting so he could just stay with Tyler in Dallas. With his boy and his brother and the city he’d come to love.  
  
  
Now, Jordie thought about how if he hadn’t been heartbroken and aching from the hurt the past eighteen months had brought him, he wouldn’t have ended up at Strome Resort. He wouldn’t have woken up with Dylan in his bed that morning.  
  
  
“I’ve kind of...made friends...with the guy who runs the resort I’m staying at.”  
  
  
“Does ‘made friends with’ mean you’re banging him?” Jamie asked.  
  
  
“It means...I don’t know what it means. We haven’t had sex. He’s got some baggage too, so we’re taking things slow.”

 

“Have you ever taken things slow in your life?” Jamie laughed.  
  
  
“I don’t think so. But I like him. He’s funny, and earnest, and knows all the wilderness stuff that we never figured out as kids. Juice loves him.”  
  
  
“Juice loves him, huh?” Jamie asked, though Jordie knew he was asking something else. Jordie wasn’t ready to confront the “L” word. It had been eight days.  
  
  
“I’m really into him,” Jordie confessed. He felt a little distraught. Like he was following the whim of his heart, powerless to logic.  
  
  
“Well, have fun. Have an off-season fling. Fuck the resort guy. Whatever you need to do to straighten your head out. I’ll see you at Mom and Dad’s in July though.”  


 

Jordie knew there was no way out of that. No way to make his stay in Ontario permanent. No way to just take Dylan with him when he left.  
  
  
“Yeah,” Jordie said. “I’ll see you then.”  
  
  
Jordie took Juice wandering along the shoreline when he got back, his sandals in his hands as he followed after Juice, splashing around in the water. Juice wasn’t super interested in swimming, but he liked hopping around in the water and would chase a stick that Jordie threw as long as it wasn’t tossed too far past his comfort zone.  
  
  
The view across the lake was overwhelming, trees dense just past the shoreline, cabins built on every available patch of land. The lake was active that afternoon, plenty of kids out on the water skiing or tubing, jet skis weaving around. Jordie knew he had this in his future with his friends back in BC, afternoons on a boat with a cooler and some snacks, someone maybe wake surfing behind them.  
  
  
He wanted to see his family and his friends, but shit. He did not want to go home.  
  
  
  
Dylan texted him just when he was starting to think about making dinner for himself.  
  
  
_Dad just left_  
  
_Wanna get dinner with my buddy_  
  
_You’ll like him he’s an idiot like me_  
  
  
And how could Jordie turn that down?  
  
  
Dylan and Jordie waited on the end of the dock for Dylan’s friend Mitch to come pick them up.  
  
  
“I just want to lay out a few facts just in case Mitch brings up some stuff in conversation, so you’re not like, taken off-guard,” Dylan said, eyes out over the water, not looking at Jordie.  
  
  
“Okay,” Jordie said, tentatively.  
  
  
“My parents are getting divorced. My mom already moved to Wisconsin with some American guy. This might be the last summer that we have the resort that my dad’s parents started back in the day, it just keeps losing money. Being here all summer like this is my punishment for dropping out of college to go chase my high school boyfriend who I found out was very, very over me, but also is necessary because my dad had to get a full-time job to pay for his divorce, and someone needs to check people in and put gas in the boats. I promise you can ask a thousand questions after dinner, but I just wanted you to hear that all from me.”  
  
Jordie paused a moment, then took one of Dylan’s hands in his own, giving it a squeeze. “Shit, I’m sorry.”  
  
  
Dylan smiled the saddest, most Dylan smile Jordie had ever seen, and pressed a kiss to his lips. “And here comes Mitch,” he said, pulling away as a little blue speedboat, looking a little worse for wear, approached, a Toronto Maple Leafs flag sticking out the back.  
  
  
Mitch was young and gangly like Dylan, and Jordie felt like an old guy around the two of them. Mitch had on a maple leafs t-shirt and a snapback that was placed on the very top of his head, as though he either wanted to preserve a hairstyle or make people think he was taller than he was. Jordie couldn’t decide which.  
  
  
Dylan introduced them and he shook Mitch’s hand, as Mitch’s suspicious eyes raked over him. He paused as though in recognition, and Jordie prayed it didn’t mean what he thought it might mean. Mitch pulled him in by the hand and clapped him on the back, so he felt like he passed some first test.  
  
  
They sat down and Mitch sped off. Dylan took back one of Jordie’s hands on the boat ride as he chattered away with Mitch, nothing that Jordie could hear because Mitch was driving very fast, and the sound of the motor and the water beneath them was too loud.  
  
  
Jordie just enjoyed the trip across the lake, to a pizza place that sounded to Jordie held every single one of Dylan’s childhood memories. The lake was large, but Mitch was insane, and they made it in just under seven minutes, which was apparently close to his record.  
  
  
They parked Mitch’s boat at one of the pizza place’s docks and headed in, Dylan’s warm hand gone from his own. Another thing they didn’t have to talk about: the fact that someone (clearly not Dylan) might recognize Jordie in public.  
  
  
At their booth, they ordered a pitcher of beer, and Dylan and Mitch ordered pizza before even asking Jordie, discussing it with him after the waitress walked away. “It’s mashed potato pizza, and if you don’t like it, whatever we have together is over,” Dylan said. “But maybe we could get an order of wings too just in case.”  
  
  
Dylan was next to him, close but not flush, Mitch sitting across from them, his eyes glued to Jordie. Dylan started yammering away about how they also make the only caesar salad he’ll eat, while Mitch pulled out his phone, his brow furrowed. Dylan sipped his beer, oblivious.  
  
  
Jordie wasn’t surprised when it came, when Mitch slid his phone across the table. “Jordie, huh?” Mitch said, and he saw that the phone was open to his Habs stats, his roster picture in the top right corner of the screen. “Jordie Benn.”  
  
Mitch turned from Jordie to Dylan. “Conference. Immediately,” he said, sliding down to the end of the booth, toward the wall. Dylan slid down with him, shooting Jordie an eye roll. They were eighteen inches away from Jordie, at most.  
  
  
“What,” Dylan said, exasperated, not even bothering to whisper. Jordie tried to give them some privacy by looking straight ahead and taking his phone out of his pocket. He still didn’t really know what to do with it. He checked his email and started unsubscribing from a bunch of coupon emails.  
  
  
“You didn’t tell me you were dating an—” he dropped his voice to a hiss, “NHL player.”  
  
Dylan hedged. “I don’t know if it would really be considered dating…” Jordie knew they needed to have some kind of conversation about that. He just didn’t know what.  
  
“Stop picking hairs. What do you know about this guy? He’s like thirty.” Mitch had him there. He was exactly thirty.  
  
  
“I am thirty,” Jordie confirmed.  
  
  
“Do you know you’re dating a twenty-one-year-old?” Mitch snapped, looking back at him. Mitch had such a goofy face, it was hard to take his anger seriously, but shit. It was there.  
  
  
Jordie actually...didn’t. He knew Dylan was a college dropout but didn’t know his exact age. He was actually — and Jordie had the decency to feel a little bit of shame about this — older than he’d guessed.  
  
  
Dylan saved him from responding. “I’m an adult, Mitchell.”  
  
  
“I’m just saying,” Mitch said, wiping his hands over his face. “What are your intentions with my best friend?”  
  
  
The pizza came out at that exact moment, the waitress giving them a strained smile as she sat the pizza down on a wire stand, and distributed plates for them. Dylan ordered wings from her before she left, and she looked to be in as much misery as Jordie felt, but at least she got to leave.  
  
  
“Wings don’t save you, mister,” Mitch pressed.  
  
  
“You don’t have to answer this,” Dylan said, but Jordie actually kind of wanted to.  
  
  
“I’m glad your friends clearly care about you this much. That makes me happy,” Jordie told Dylan. He squeezed Dylan’s hand before letting go to serve Dylan a slice of pizza. He took a breath and looked at Mitch.  
  
  
“I didn’t come into this with intentions or expectations. It kind of surprised me — it really surprised me — to find Dylan here. The difficult thing, when you find someone you care about so much in a situation that is definitionally temporary,” Jordie paused, collecting his thoughts. “Well, it’s all difficult. I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer. We haven’t talked about it yet. I guess we need to talk about it.” He aimed his last sentence at Dylan, who nodded, his sad eyes back. He hated being the reason for those eyes.  
  
  
“Okay,” Mitch said. “That was better than I thought it was going to be.” He took a bite of his pizza. Then, mouth full, “what’s it like playing with Brendan Gallagher?”  
  
  
Jordie told some non-offensive hockey stories and realized this was the first time Dylan was hearing about his hockey life. About road trips and his teammates and Montreal. Mitch asked a million questions, but Dylan just sat there absorbing. Absorbing pizza and wings, that is.  
  
  
The mashed potato pizza was just as good as Dylan said it would be, but he was glad for the wings too. This was glorious, glorious June food before he had to tighten his macros up and eat for the season. He decided to enjoy it while he could.  
  
  
Mitch and Dylan talked a little about Dylan’s parents, and his mom in America. Apparently, they had been on the rocks for a while, and it was nice that things were getting resolved. But Dylan was still heartbroken. He missed his mom.  
  
  
“Connor’s been asking me about you,” Mitch said, voice a little lower than before. “Haven’t really known what to say.”  
  
“You can tell him to fuck off,” Dylan said, and Jordie put the pieces together himself. Connor was the ex. “I think the only merciful thing that has happened all summer was him staying in Edmonton for that internship and not coming back here this summer. He would be a body in the bottom of the lake if he came back here.” They were wrapping up their dinner, plates filled with crumbs and crusts and chicken bones. Jordie took Dylan’s hand back under the table, and Dylan signed, squeezing back.  
  
  
Jordie had almost forgotten how nice it felt to hold someone’s hand. Their fingers entwined with yours, just a simple way of staying connected.  
  
  
“He feels awful,” Mitch said.  
  
“Good,” Jordie said, surprising everyone at the table, including himself. “He should feel awful.” Jordie didn’t know the full depth or breadth of the situation, but he knew that Dylan’s heart was broken by it, and that meant Jordie would crush Connor if he ever saw him.  
  
  
Mitch’s face brightened.

 

“I was worried about this one,” he said to Dylan. “But I’m not worried anymore.”  
  
  
When Mitch dropped them off, he hugged Jordie, and stood on his tip-toes to kiss Dylan on the forehead, giving him a little slap on the cheek. “I’m glad to see you smiling again,” he said, before driving off.  
  
  
“I wish he didn’t have a job in Toronto this summer. This is the first time he’s been up so far. Usually, we spend literally every second together during the summer. It’s different this year. No Mitch. Obviously no Connor. It’s like a different lake,” Dylan said, as they walked back to Jordie’s cabin. Dylan was technically on call for whatever anyone needed, but the night had been nice and open. Tuesdays were the days they had the most vacancies, which rang in Jordie’s mind. He was glad for a little break with Dylan, but he had a new worry, about Dylan’s family being able to keep the resort.  
  
  
“Different good, maybe,” Dylan said, looking at Jordie. Jordie unlocked his cabin, and let Juice out to pee. When they finally got settled onto the couch, Dylan was uncharacteristically quiet.  
  
  
“I liked Mitch,” he told Dylan.  
  
  
“Mitch is a lot,” Dylan laughed, smiling a little as he curled closer into Jordie’s side, feet up on the coffee table.  
  
  
“Mitch asked some good questions, though.”  
  
“I guess so,” Dylan said, a little uncomfortable.  
  
  
“Is it weird that I’m thirty?” Jordie asked, gently. Of course it was a little weird. When you have to clarify that it’s fine because it’s legal, there’s no way it isn’t weird. But Jordie wanted to know what Dylan thought.  
  
  
“Naw,” Dylan said. “If you were like, thirty and divorced with two kids, then it might be weird. But you’re just a single guy with a broken heart like me. I think we’re good together.”  
  
“I think we’re good together, too,” Jordie said. “Like, maybe too good.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“Just that...I don’t know how I’m going to be able to leave.”  
  
  
“I don’t want you to.”  
  
“I have to be in BC in July, Montreal in September.”  
  
“Come back before you have to report to the Habs,” Dylan said. “I can come visit you in Montreal.”  
  
  
“So you agree that whatever this is is bigger than what fits in this cabin,” Jordie said, not really a question. He didn’t want to ask it like a question. He didn’t want Dylan to turn him down.  
  
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Yes.”  
  
  
Jordie kissed him then, a rough, crushing kiss, hungry with want, with his need for Dylan. Dylan’s hands gripped onto his shoulders as Jordie pushed Dylan onto his back on the couch, one hand bracing himself over Dylan as the other snaked up and under Dylan’s t-shirt to the warm skin underneath. He’d seen Dylan shirtless, and he’d slept next to him shirtless, but he hadn’t really gotten his heads on him until then.  
  
  
Dylan shifted under him to press up against him, hard in his shorts already. Jordie was so keyed up from being around Dylan in such a heretofor chaste way that it didn’t take much for him either. Dylan’s hands were on his shoulders and down his chest and up Jordie’s own shirt in moments, when Jordie finally realized that they were making out in front of a huge wall of windows.  
  
  
“Upstairs?” he panted, trailing kisses down Dylan’s jaw to his neck, skin there so soft and warm Jordie wanted to be buried there. Dylan nodded, and they scrambled up off the couch. The sight of Dylan, messy hair, shirt askew, evidence of his hard-on obvious under his basketball shorts made Jordie’s mouth go dry, his breath catching.  
  
  
He pulled Dylan back to him, the thought of not kissing him until they were already upstairs feeling impossible. Dylan’s lips were soft and slick from kissing already, and Jordie lost all motivation to move. Until Dylan’s hands slipped down his back and under the waistband of his shorts.  
  
  
“Okay, okay upstairs,” he said, refocusing them to hurry upstairs. Dylan pulled him back onto the bed, scrambling to get Jordie’s shirt off of him. He pulled it over his head and started fumbling with Dylan’s, laughing as Dylan got it tangled over his head.  
  
  
“Hey now,” Dylan said through his shirt, “rude.” Jordie couldn’t say anything, just stared at Dylan’s smooth chest. Dylan tossed his shirt away finally and leaned back, letting Jordie trail kisses from his belly button back up to his neck. He nipped at Dylan’s jaw and earned a soft little moan that made his dick impossibly harder.  
  
  
Dylan’s hands slipped down to his ass, pulling their hips together in a move that was more forward than he’d seen from Dylan before. Whatever they’d been doing up until then had been fairly innocent and Jordie realized he had no idea what Dylan was like in bed. He was very invested in finding out.  
  
  
Jordie shifted his hips forward to give their friction a little rhythm, as Dylan shoved his shorts and underwear down over his ass, his hands exploring the bare skin there. “Didn’t know you were an ass guy,” Jordie said between kisses.  
  
“Are you kidding me, I’m into your whole fucking body, jesus,” he said, shoving Jordie back by his shoulders a little to get a better look at his body. “Plus, hockey ass, goddamn.”  
  
Dylan’s chest was flushed, his cheeks pink, lips plump and obscene looking. He couldn’t imagine the bruise-like dark circles under his eyes anymore, not like this. Like this, Jordie couldn’t think about anything other than getting the rest of Dylan’s clothes off.  
  
  
Dylan had the same idea, going back for Jordie’s shorts, carefully pulling them over his dick. Dylan gasped. “Fuck. Wow.”  
  
  
Jordie’s dick twitched. It was hot, being admired like that. He couldn’t help it. It was Dylan’s turn to laugh.  
  
  
“You’re into having a big dick, then?” He asked, crawling up onto his knees like Jordie was, pulling him into a kiss.  
  
  
“You’re into me having a big dick?” he asked, and Dylan reached between them, his hand encircling their subject of discussion, short-circuiting Jordie’s brain, ending the conversation. They kissed while Dylan jerked him off in firm, confident strokes, while the other hand tangled into the hair at the back of Jordie’s neck.  
  
  
Jordie couldn’t help the moans and gasps coming out of his mouth as Dylan kept working, a smug smile on his face as they broke their kiss to breathe for a moment. Jordie took his opportunity to slide Dylan’s shorts off of his hips, and let Dylan manhandle him onto his back, watching as Dylan finished removing his shorts, and returned to him, naked and glorious and not a bit shy the way Jordie had been shy when he was twenty-one.  
  
  
Dylan straddled him, the weight of his body forcing Jordie to be present in every second of what was going on. He couldn’t stop touching Dylan all over, squeezing his shoulders, pinching his nipples, gripping his waist. This was what Dylan would look like if he were riding him, if Jordie was buried inside of him. The very idea of it was driving Jordie crazy. He reached between them to jerk them off together. Dylan braced himself above Jordie with two hands on his chest, his eyes fluttering closed at the feeling of Jordie’s hand on him, hips shifting into Jordie’s grip.  
  
  
He was so, so beautiful, his hair hanging down into his face, mouth open just the slightest bit, letting out a string of soft moans and grunts. Jordie couldn’t take his eyes off of Dylan’s mouth, off the thoughts of Dylan’s mouth stretched around his dick. The warmth of it, the wetness.  
  
  
Jordie sped his hand up a little, and Dylan’s eyes snapped back open, refocusing. “Getting close?” he asked, and Jordie nodded. Dylan brushed his hand away and replaced it with his own just on Jordie, his grip nice and tight, letting Jordie fuck up into it a little. Jordie came messy across his chest and Dylan’s eyes darkened even further, bottom lip disappearing between his teeth.  
  
  
“I have never seen anything sexier than you right now,” Jordie said, completely honest, the blush in Dylan’s cheeks staining darker. He didn’t bother to try to clean himself up. He just pushed Dylan off of him and onto his back, nudging his legs apart so he could settle between them. Dylan gasped again, realizing what Jordie was about to do.  
  
  
“Fuck,” Dylan said, “jesus christ, fuck.” If Jordie had learned anything about Dylan in bed, it’s that he swore a lot. Jordie was fine with it, ducking to take Dylan into his mouth. Dylan’s hips reacted immediately, and he swore another apology while Jordie held them down.  
  
  
Jordie loved oral almost more than penetration. It was so intimate for your partner’s face to be between your legs. There had to be trust there, and when he looked up at Dylan, he saw it there in his eyes, lust and disbelief, and something else. Dylan’s hands came to rest in Jordie’s hair, more of a scalp massage than anything insistent, and he listened to the sounds that Dylan was making, slowly responding to their escalation. When Dylan’s moans started getting frantic, he pushed Jordie off of him, and Jordie jerked him off the rest of the way. Dylan’s head hit the pillow behind him, trembling from his orgasm.  
  
  
He let Jordie clean them up with his t-shirt and pull him close, pulling the blankets over them now that they were cooling off. Dylan fit against him like a puzzle piece, legs tangling, head on his chest. He stroked up and down Dylan’s arm, letting the quiet settle over them.  
  
  
Sex was really, really great when you had a real connection with someone. Jordie had forgotten that.  
  
  
“Fuck,” Dylan said again, letting out a sigh.  
  
  
“Good ‘fuck,’ I hope.”  
  
“Yeah, Jordie, you’re a good fuck,” Dylan said, and Jordie laughed.  
  
  
“You know what I meant.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. That was...that was very good.”  
  
  
Jordie kissed him on the forehead, played with his hair.  
  
  
“I’m not a virgin or anything, but I don’t exactly have the most experience of anyone,” Dylan said, his voice quieter than it was when he was ribbing Jordie. “I was in a monogamous relationship from junior year of high school until like, six months ago. I was worried that this would be weird, or awkward, or I wouldn’t know what to do, I don’t know.” Dylan paused, but Jordie didn’t interrupt him. “It was amazing. Thanks for being patient with me.”  
  
  
“It was worth the wait.”  
  
  
“This year has really sucked. My mom kind of exploded our family six months ago. My older brother moved to New York a while ago. My little brother is off playing hockey in the O. It was just my dad and I, and I just felt so broken. I hated college. Connor was out in Edmonton, at a school that made a huge show of recruiting him but I couldn’t get into. He was so busy with school and hockey and a social life that he never really had time to talk to me. I just thought that if I went there, he’d have time for me. It sounds really fucking pathetic now.”  
  
“It doesn’t sound pathetic. You were hurting. You wanted your person. There’s nothing pathetic about that,” Jordie said. He hated thinking about how miserable Dylan was then, but he was glad that he was talking to Dylan about this. It felt like a wall between them was falling down.  
  
  
“I drove all the way to Edmonton from Toronto just to walk in on him fucking his roommate. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. The worst day of my life. Because I had no idea that was going on. I kept hearing about his German roommate Leon, and how cool and nice Leon was and how good at hockey Leon was, and I still just had no idea. I never thought Connor could do that to me.”  
  
  
“Baby, I am so sorry.” Jordie didn’t know what else to say. He just wanted Dylan to feel happy again.  
  
  
“I like that,” Dylan said, voice a little brighter. “The ‘baby.’ I like that.”  
  
“Good,” Jordie said. He wrapped an arm a little tighter around Dylan, feeling possessive of him for the first time. Feeling like he would tear Connor apart if he ever saw him, for what he’d done to Jordie’s boy. “Thank you for telling me that. For trusting me.”  
  
  
Jordie heard Juice pad up the stairs, now that they were finally quiet for a while. Juice came to check out what was going on, then climbed up on the bed and laid down, curled like a donut against Dylan’s back.  
  
  
Dylan laughed. “No other sandwich I’d rather be part of,” he said.  
  
  
“You’re not weirded out?”  
  
“Not by Juice cuddles.”  
  
“You wanna hear about my ex?” Jordie asked, wanting to put the same vulnerability on offer that Dylan had given him.  
  
  
“If you want to tell me,” Dylan said.  
  
  
“I had a boyfriend when I was in Dallas. We weren’t super serious. I thought. I always thought it was a little more casual of a situation, or that I had more casual feelings about him until I was traded, and we were faced with no options. I couldn’t stay. He couldn’t follow me. Kind of a shitty time to realize my feelings weren’t all that casual as it turned out.”  
  
“That sucks.”  
  
“Yeah, it did suck. I got on a plane to Montreal, and we’d barely talked about what we were going to do about our relationship. I heard from one of my buddies the next day he’d slept with someone else that same night, like, as I was on my plane.”  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
“I don’t think we were technically together, then. He’s the kind of guy who is super physical. Very touchy-feely. He’d sit on your lap two seconds after meeting you. I think he needed comfort, and sex was comfort for him. I didn’t exactly make very many prudent sexual decisions in the following months. I’m clean — just to be up front about that. Just...had a kind of slutty first year in Montreal. I saw him a few more times. He visited me, I was in Dallas for hockey, or to see my brother. We just had a bunch of messy fights. Kept coming back to hurt each other. There was no bad guy there. Or, no good guy is more of an accurate statement. No one to blame except both of us.”  
  
“And you’re done for good?”  
  
“Oh yeah. I haven’t seen him in maybe ten months? Heard he’s seeing someone new. I wish him well, but he sure did a number on my heart.”  
  
  
“Thanks for telling me that,” Dylan said, finally separating enough from their entangled state to kiss Jordie, the zing of electricity between them still present.  
  
  
“You want to know another secret?” Jordie asked. Dylan nodded. “I always get hungry after sex. You want some snacks?”  
  
  
Dylan laughed. “What kind of snacks?”  
  
  
Jordie dressed Dylan in his pajamas, which were just big enough of him to be a visual reminder that he wasn’t wearing his own clothes, and they headed downstairs. Jordie made a cheese and crackers plate with summer sausage and grapes, put peanut butter in Juice’s Kong so they could all have a treat, and snuggled into the couch to watch TV. Dylan was tucked under Jordie’s arm, and Jordie couldn’t help but keep sticking his face into Dylan’s neck, kissing him and nipping at him. The sex halo hadn’t left them yet. Jordie couldn’t keep his hands off of him.  
  
  
“So what are we going to do when you have to go back to BC?” Dylan asked, his question a cold bucket of water on Jordie’s head.  
  
  
“I forgot I ever had to leave,” Jordie admitted. It was true. He’d forgotten their whole evening of activities had started with that question. The agreement that they didn’t want this to just be a fling.  
  
  
“I checked. Someone has this cabin right after you, and July is pretty booked up.”  
  
  
“We have three weeks still,” Jordie said, knowing that didn’t change anything. After that, then what? He sighed. “But you’re right. We should figure out something. Maybe not tonight. But we’ll work on a plan, okay?”  
  
  
Dylan looked up at him, eyes trusting, even with what happened with Connor. Dylan was good; Jordie could feel it in his bones.  
  
  
“Stay tonight,” Jordie asked, not wanting to give up a single second of their time together.  
  
  
“Duh,” Dylan said.  
  
  
-

 

The next day was Wednesday, and Dylan had decided it was a great time for their camping trip.  
  
  
“What about, for example, next week?” Jordie asked, fully intending on pushing it out until either the last possible moment or conveniently (for him) having it never work out.  
  
  
“Nope, today is the best day. Lowest cabin count for the rest of the summer tonight. This is it.”  
  
  
Dylan dragged them up to the office cabin, where they had their camping gear in a shed. As kids, he and his brothers spent all summer at the resort, and their parents let them camp alone almost every night. “Got us out of their hair,” Dylan explained. His parents had three kids too. He got it.  
  
  
He watched as Dylan dug around in their shed, tossing stuff out to where Jordie was standing, at a distance, beyond the shed doors. Even Juice stayed outside.  
  
  
“Too fancy for cobwebs?” Dylan asked him.  
  
  
“I like a specific kind of wilderness, and it doesn’t involve tent poles.”  
  
  
“You’ll have fun,” Dylan promised. “I’ll make it worth your while.”  
  
  
“Okay, now I’m interested.”  
  
  
Dylan got their camping stuff ready in a pile, and they went inside to check out food for lunch. “You need to go grocery shopping,” Jordie said, standing behind Dylan, looking into the refrigerator.  
  
  
“You can take me tomorrow.” Jordie knew Dylan had a car up here, parked near the office, but out of the little guest parking lot they had. Still, he liked the idea of Dylan wanting to go with him.  
  
“I’ll take you grocery shopping tomorrow if you show me your childhood bedroom.”  
  
“I don’t have a childhood bedroom here.”  
  
“You have a bedroom here though.”  
  
“I have a room I share with my brothers here.”  
  
  
“Well, let me see that, then,” Jordie said, wanting to know every crevice of Dylan’s life, down to his cabin room. Dylan rolled his eyes, but headed down the hall, passing the bathroom on the left, behind the kitchen.  
  
  
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jordie said, pulling Dylan into the bathroom instead. It wasn’t gigantic. It was easily a quarter of the size of the amazing bathroom Jordie had back in Montreal. But it was massive compared to the bathroom in his cabin. “You’ve been holding out on me.”  
  
He stepped into the shower and turned around. “Look, I’m not hitting my shoulders. I’m not hitting my head on the shower head. This is incredible.”  
  
“Well, your cabin is smaller,” Dylan said, shrugging. “Plus, people normally stay an average of four days, so you deal.”  
  
  
Dylan was already headed back out of the bathroom when Jordie caught him again, wrapping his arms around him from behind. They were standing in front of the mirror, and Jordie realized that this was the first time that he’d really taken a look at him and Dylan together. It was weird to think about that. They’d never even taken a selfie together. With Tyler, Jordie had about seven thousand selfies of them together by the time they’d woken up next to each other for the first time after (arguably) their first date.  
  
  
“Shit, you are so beautiful,” he told Dylan, watching the blush rise on his cheeks. Jordie still wasn't over the feeling of being pressed up against Dylan, and he couldn’t stop looking at them together. Dylan was in another shirt with the arms cut off, arms holes low to show off quite a lot of skin and Jordie slipped his hands inside Dylan’s shirt, skimmed them over his chest. He was just slightly shorter than Dylan but undoubtedly broader in the shoulders. “You are very, very sexy,” he whispered in Dylan’s ear.  
  
  
Dylan let out a sigh, leaning back into Jordie a little, letting Jordie take his weight. Jordie tucked his face into Dylan’s neck, kissed up behind his ear. “Wait,” Dylan breathed, his voice already a little rough, showing Jordie how much of an effect Jordie was having on him. He scrambled his phone out of his pocket and flipped his camera on.  
  
“We don’t have any pictures together,” he explained, the pink in his cheeks just slightly more noticeable. He took a few mirror selfies, then Jordie made him flip the camera around for a few where Jordie’s hands weren’t obviously under Dylan’s clothes. He liked seeing them together.  
  
  
“Send those to me,” he requested, and Dylan nodded, the edge of the moment a little awkward in its modern intimacy. “Now we can go see your room.”  
  
  
Dylan detangled himself from Jordie, and led the way across the hall, into a room with a full sized bed on the sloped wall, and bunk beds on the other. The full was the one that was obviously being slept in. The rest of the room was disheveled, dirty clothes on the floor, crap taped up on the walls. He knew Dylan had been coming up to this cabin his whole life, but it felt like such a young room. He had to remind himself that yes, Dylan was that young, and also that no, he wasn’t.  
  
  
“You got the good bed?” Jordie asked, pointing over to the tangle of Dylan’s blankets.  
  
  
“If we want to get technical, that’s Ryan’s bed, my older brother. But since I’m here and he’s not, it’s mine for now.”  
  
  
“Which is yours?” Jordie said, looking over to the bunk beds for the first time. “Wait. Never mind. Top bunk,” he said. The bottom bunk had some hockey posters up. Some Leafs, and also for some reason, some Fliers. However, the top bunk had a poster of Morgan Rielly hanging up, hearts drawn around it in red sharpie.  
  
  
Dylan covered his face in his hands. “The hearts are courtesy of Mitchell Marner,” Dylan told him. “They’re like, white noise I’ve seen it so much. I totally forgot about it, damnit.”  
  
  
“Morgan Rielly, huh?” Jordie asked, teasing him a little.  
  
  
“He’s just a nice Canadian boy,” Dylan argued, not looking Jordie in the eyes.  
  
  
“Morgan Rielly is your NHL crush. Interesting. Meanwhile, there’s an NHL player in your bed who looks nothing like Rielly.”  
  
“I have diverse tastes.” Jordie could tell that Dylan kind of wanted to die. “Plus, technically, you’ve never been in my bed.”  
  
“We can change that.”  
  
“I’m not making out with you on the top bunk with Morgan Rielly looking down at us.”  
  
  
“Well, I offered.”  
  
“Who’s your NHL crush?” Dylan asked instead.  
  
  
“Can’t answer that. Too close to everyone’s bullshit to crush on any of them.”  
  
“No? You don’t have a thing for any of the guys on your team?”  
  
“The Habs?” Jordie asked, shocked. “Those disasters?” He meant ‘disasters’ affectionately, mostly.  
  
  
“Hearing you loud and clear. What about the Stars? Any of the Stars catch your fancy?”  
  
Jordie’s breath caught in his throat. He could feel himself freeze, watched as Dylan’s expression changed as he noticed what was going on with Jordie. Their light, jokey moment ground to a halt.  
  
  
“Oh,” Dylan said as he realized what Jordie's pause meant. “Oh.”  
  
“He’s not...out. Shockingly enough, an NHL player isn’t out. Like me, for example. So I didn’t want to...I’m just trying to protect his privacy. It’s not my thing to tell, you know?”  
  
  
“I get it,” Dylan said, stepping into Jordie’s space. Jordie reeled him in, one hand at his waist, one coming up to cup his cheek, warm and sweet in his hand. He brushed his thumb across his cheek. He felt a rush of gratitude at how easily Dylan accepted that. Didn’t make a big deal out of it.  
  
  
“You just make me feel so much, you know that?” Jordie said, pressing a soft kiss to Dylan’s lips. Dylan held onto him, just staying in that kiss with Jordie. When he finally pulled away, he smiled this shy little smile that opened some floodgate in Jordie’s heart. Whatever he’d been holding back about himself, whatever reservations he’d been feeling were completely shattered. It was terrifying. Love was terrifying.  
  
  
Dylan just kissed him again, and Jordie couldn’t help it. He picked Dylan up under his butt and dropped him down on the full-sized bed, right into Dylan’s nest of blankets. It smelled so much like Dylan, like his shampoo and deodorant, the smell of his skin. It was nice, feeling surrounded by him, nice hearing Dylan’s little moans as he worked Dylan’s shorts down just far enough and his shirt up just far enough to suck him off, swallowing down his orgasm this time. He was very, very into being between Dylan’s legs. Dylan got shaky and sleepy after coming but tried to paw at Jordie’s clothes anyway.  
  
  
“Nope,” Jordie said, already getting off the bed. He adjusted himself in his pants, trying to shake off his arousal. “We have camping to do, apparently.”  
  
“Apparently,” Dylan groaned, straightening his clothes and following Jordie back out of the cabin.  
  
They found Juice belly up in the sunshine, right next to the camping gear, looking annoyed that he’d been disturbed. “It’s like, a ten-minute walk,” Dylan said, “so it’s nothing strenuous. Still technically on our land and everything.”  
  
  
They had a tent and sleeping bags, and a lot of other stuff Jordie wasn’t well acquainted with, plus water. They would come back for breakfast, so they didn’t even need to pack Juice a meal. It really was camping-lite, and Jordie still didn’t want to do it.  
  
Still, as they hiked out to their camping spot, he watched Dylan’s face as he told stories about camping with his brothers growing up, and Jordie couldn’t back out. It was a short walk. Shorter than the ones he usually took Juice on. The path was well-established, and when they finally ended in a clearing, Jordie knew it was the right spot because Dylan unceremoniously threw everything he was holding down. Juice sniffed the perimeter.  
  
  
“Home sweet home,” Dylan said, opening his arms up big and proud. There was a log by a fire pit, and a flat area Jordie assumed a tent would go. He put his own pack down, as Dylan started getting busy making camp. He showed Jordie how to set up a tent, but didn’t let Jordie put the sleeping bags out yet. “I want to sleep under the stars, if possible.”  
  
“Oh no,” Jordie said. “Every man has his limits, and I’m not opening my body up to any bug who wants to come along for a snack.”  
  
Dylan pouted, bottom lip trembling, and had he held out for two more seconds, Jordie would have caved. “Fine, fine,” Dylan said. “But stargazing for sure, no negotiation there.”  
  
“Alright. We’ll look, and then go sleep in our little tent cave. Plus, I don’t want Juice wandering off in the middle of the night.” Juice was making good work out of a stick, and Dylan nodded, diverting his attention to the fire. He watched Dylan build this one from scratch, finding wood in the area around the clearing, sticks of all shapes and sizes. He’d brought a box of matches but only used two, as Jordie sat on the log being useless.  
  
  
They roasted hot dogs and made s’mores, took swigs from the bottle of whiskey Jordie had packed. As it got dark, Jordie was feeling loose and happy. Dylan was sitting on the ground between Jordie’s legs as Jordie worked on his shoulders, tight and full of knots from all the work he did around the resort, groaning every time Jordie dug his fingers into a new muscle.  
  
  
“You’re obscene,” Jordie accused, and Dylan just shrugged, not a care in the world. Jordie wasn’t sold on camping. He was happy because he was with Dylan, not because he was outside. He hadn’t felt this purely happy in years, including when he was with Tyler. Tyler always had a little drama to him, was naturally combative. Jordie knew he’d had strong feelings for Tyler when they’d been together if the damage on his heart was any indicator. But Dylan wasn’t like that.  
  
  
Being with Dylan gave Jordie a new perspective on Tyler, the longest relationship he’d had. The feelings he had for Dylan already felt fuller and more complex than what he’d felt before, like he’d peeled a layer deeper into himself, his heart.  
  
  
They zipped their sleeping bags together when it was time for bed, and laid out on them in the grass, per Dylan’s instructions. Jordie thought Dylan would be a wealth of knowledge when it came to the stars, but apparently his older brother was the star nerd. Dylan just liked the feeling of thinking about the vastness of the universe and feeling small, he said, and that was okay with Jordie too.  
  
  
Jordie told Dylan about his summers as a kid, playing baseball as heavily as he played hockey in the winter, what it was like growing up on an island. He let Dylan decide when it was time to head into the tent, and almost cheered when Dylan got up finally. He even brought a sleeping bag for Juice, which he pulled close to them so Juice could snuggle, which predictably he did. Dylan zipped the tent door behind them, slid into their shared sleeping bag, and snuggled up to Jordie.  
  
  
Jordie held onto him, listening to his breathing as he fell asleep, and trying to think of what he could do to keep this. To keep Dylan.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Their days found a rhythm. Jordie would wake up with Dylan in his bed, scrambling to get ready and back to the office in time to help customers check in or out, gas up boats, sign out boat keys, build fires, and whatever else needed doing that day. Jordie sometimes followed him around like a puppy, sometimes cruised around in a boat if there was an open one, or hiked with Juice. He was already on page eighteen of his fantasy novel. He decided maybe he just needed to finish it by the time he retired from hockey, instead of by the end of the summer.  
  
  
It was Sunday, a little after his half-way point. He had exactly two weeks left of his stay at Strome Resort. Fourteen days to figure out...something.  
  
  
Dylan had a crazy busy day, and Jordie resented it a little. He was cleaning out cabins, and checking people out pretty much all day. Dylan told him that years ago, they had a service come and do this for them, which had been awesome. A few years back, they’d canceled that service. It cost too much when they had “people who were perfectly capable of doing it, right here,” Dylan had said, rolling his eyes as he quoted his dad.  
  
  
Jordie was down on the dock, boat keys in hand. Earlier that week, Dylan had woken him up very early to show him his favorite fishing spots on the lake. He’d come up to Strome Resort picturing himself fishing almost every day, but the reality of the situation was that he’d rather have Dylan in his bed than in a boat, and the bed usually won.  
  
  
He was just twiddling his thumbs, sitting on the bench at the end of the dock when he saw a little fishing boat approach, a blonde young man driving it. The boat was so small Jordie wasn’t sure if it could hold the fish that were caught, let alone another person. It kept getting closer, until it finally came to rest right at the front of the dock, close enough for Juice to hop in, if Juice trusted boats or strangers at all.  
  
  
“Hey, do you know the guys that work here?” the man asked.  
  
  
“I know one of them,” Jordie said, a little bit on alert now.  
  
  
“Is it Dylan?” boat guy asked. “He’s like, slim, brown hair, really beautiful brown eyes? Have you seen him around?”  
  
  
Really beautiful brown eyes. You didn’t have to tell Jordie that twice. He wholeheartedly agreed. However, he also knew that it wasn’t something casual to say about someone.  
  
  
“Dylan’s really busy today,” Jordie said. He was pretty sure he was looking at Connor. The same Connor who had broken Dylan’s heart. “What’s your name? I’ll tell him you came looking for him.”  
  
  
“I’m Connor,” he said, confirming Jordie’s suspicions. He felt his hackles rise. He could tell that Juice was feeling his anxiety too. “I’ll just go find him,” he said, pulling his boat around to shore. He pulled his little trolling motor up out of the water and hopped out to drag his boat up onto the beach.  
  
  
Jordie walked the dock back to the shore to meet him there. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jordie said. Standing, Connor was shorter than Dylan. He could see the hockey build in him that had made his university really chase him.  
  
  
“No, it’s fine. I basically grew up here. I’m sure I can find him.”  
  
  
“You’re not listening to me,” Jordie said, placing one hand gently on Connor’s chest. “I think you should go home.”  
  
He could see the wheels spinning in Connor’s head as he realized that this random guy at the end of the dock must know who he was. Have some kind of skin in the game. “Who are you?” Connor asked.  
  
  
Before Jordie could respond, he heard Dylan’s swift, sure footsteps as he bounded down the path to the docks. “Hey babe, you still down here?” he called before Jordie could even see him, kept his eyes on Connor as he absorbed the ‘babe.’ There was no way he didn’t recognize Dylan’s voice.  
  
  
“Yeah, sweetheart. I’m still here,” Jordie called back. “We have an issue here though.”  
  
  
Dylan stopped in his tracks the second he was close enough to see what Jordie meant. “Oh,” he said, his face falling immediately upon seeing Connor. Juice was what Jordie called “full mohawk,” the hair on his back standing at attention from the crown of his head all the way to his tail. He positioned himself between Connor and Dylan, and Jordie didn’t think he’d ever loved his dog more than he did in that moment.  
  
  
“Dyls,” Connor said, looking at least a little confused at what was happening. “I just want to talk.”  
  
  
“That’s not going to happen,” Jordie said. Connor tried to edge around him, but Jordie shifted again to block him.  
  
  
“Are you serious dude?” Connor asked Jordie. Jordie just folded his arms across his chest. Jordie knew he could look intimidating if he wanted to — big and tattooed. Right then, he wanted to. Connor took a step back.  
  
  
“You know I don’t want to talk to you. If I wanted to talk to you, I would have returned your phone calls or texts. Or emails. Or Facebook messages.”  
  
  
“That’s why I thought I’d come see you,” Connor said. He didn’t quite seem to get how unwelcome he was. Jordie was getting frustrated.  
  
  
“It’s time to go,” Jordie said, walking toward Connor to push him back toward his boat.  
  
  
“Are you really going to let him do this?” Connor asked Dylan, craning his neck to see around Jordie. Dylan just turned around and walked away. Juice followed him.  
  
  
“Goddamnit,” Connor said. It came out like a whine. “So you’re the new boyfriend I guess,” Connor said, looking Jordie up and down. “We were together for five years. Our hearts belong together.”  
  
“You broke his heart. Now fuck off,” Jordie said, feeling very much like if he needed a job after hockey personal bodyguard would be an option. Or bouncer.  
  
  
“Jesus,” Connor complained, but he pushed his boat away from shore and hopped back in it, moving the motor back into the water to propel him away from Strome Resort. Jordie watched as Connor got smaller and smaller, disappearing across the water. Good riddance.  
  
  
Jordie made his way back to his cabin, hoping Dylan would be there. As soon as he was in sight, he could see Dylan pacing in his living room, through the wide windows. Jordie just wanted to hold him.  
  
  
He barely made it in the door when Dylan, eyes filled with angry tears, pushed him up against the back of the door and crushed his lips in a kiss. Dylan was strong and Jordie was caught off guard. But Dylan’s hands cradled Jordie’s head so he didn’t hit it on the door. Dylan’s lips were ferocious on his, the kiss rough and possessive. Dylan’s mouth trailed down Jordie’s neck, and he pulled down the collar of Jordie’s shirt to suck a hickey on his collarbone.  
  
  
“Not that I’m not into this — because I am very into this,” Jordie said, already feeling the effects of what Dylan was doing to him.  
  
“But,” Dylan said, pulling back a little, to look Jordie in the eye. He still had Jordie pressed against the door, the weight of him keeping Jordie there.  
  
  
Jordie took Dylan’s face in his hands and placed a sweet kiss on his lips. “How are you?”  
  
  
Dylan sighed, and Jordie felt the fight go out of him. “Why the fuck did he have to just show up like that?” Dylan asked, the tears finally spilling down his face.  
  
  
“Hey, hey,” Jordie said softly, wiping tears away with his thumbs. “He’s gone. I watched him until he was a speck on the horizon.”  
  
Dylan shook his head. “He’s been texting me all summer. I stopped responding to them about when you showed up. It’s so infuriating, because I know he’s still with his roommate. Like, he just posted a photo of him and Leon on Instagram like, a week ago. So why can’t he just fucking leave me alone?”  
  
  
His tears turned from angry to sad, and Jordie pulled him close for a hug, wrapped him up tight. Dylan clung to him, buried his face in Jordie’s shoulder as he shook with tears.  
  
  
“Because he’s a dick, that’s why,” Jordie said. He didn’t have a better answer. He didn’t know why Connor was being this way, but he could imagine being with someone since you were that young would do a number on you.  
  
  
Jordie moved them away from the front door, locking it behind them for the first time since he’d arrived. He didn’t let go of Dylan, but instead led him into the kitchen and filled up a glass of water for him. Jordie kept him close, rubbed his back as Dylan’s breath calmed down.  
  
  
“I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t there,” Dylan said, finally extricating himself from Jordie to lean against the counter, take a few sips of water.  
  
  
“You would have shoved him in the lake,” Jordie said, shrugging. It made Dylan laugh a bit, the best sound in the entire world. Dylan was looking at him in an unbearably fond way, and Jordie kissed him again. He basically wanted to be kissing Dylan always.  
  
  
When Dylan spoke again, his voice was soft but resolved. “I want you to fuck me,” Dylan said, and Jordie’s body had about six different instant reactions to those words. They were two boys semi-alone in the woods with honestly quite a bit of time on their hands. They had done some quality exploring of each other’s bodies. But they hadn’t done that yet. Jordie was waiting for Dylan to decide he was ready first.  
  
  
While Jordie’s body was on board for that prospect — he’d been having literal dreams about it, actually, waking up hard and pressed against the object of his affection as though he was getting paid back for doing something truly good in his life — the ghost of Connor still hung over their conversation. It made Jordie feel, well, weird about it.  
  
  
“Oh, sweetheart, I want that too,” Jordie started. He already saw Dylan’s face beginning to fall. “And we will.”  
  
  
“But?”  
  
  
“But it’s been, what, not even a half hour since your ex showed up to shake you up and make you cry? I don’t want our first time doing this together to be with a Connor storm cloud above us. I don't want Connor on your mind at all when I’m fucking you.” Jordie said the words, ‘fucking you,’ but what he meant, what he was embarrassed to say instead was ‘making love to you.’  
  
  
“I just want to be completely surrounded by you,” Dylan argued. Jordie knew the face he was making. That stubborn, hurt face of feeling rejected. Jordie didn’t like making Dylan feel that way.  
  
  
“What about this instead,” Jordie said, cupping Dylan’s cheek in order to tip his face back toward Jordie’s, to look him in the eye. “What if I finger you, and we start getting used to what that feels like together?” Jordie was pressed close enough to Dylan to feel his interest in that idea. Dylan turned his head in Jordie’s hand just enough to press a kiss to his palm, then nodded.  
  
  
“I’d like that,” Dylan said. One of the most difficult things ever was discussing sex with any kind of a level head when you were already a little horny, and Jordie was always a little horny around Dylan. Dylan had the sexual appetite of a twenty-one-year-old, which meant that even without penetrative sex, Jordie had been having a very satisfying past week-ish of his life.  
  
  
They went upstairs, to what Jordie was beginning to think of as ‘their bed.’ Dylan hadn’t been back to sleep in his own cabin in quite some time, though every once in a while his dad would show up early, and Dylan would have to pretend he was out fishing early. He’d started keeping his fishing gear at Jordie’s, just so he’d have something to carry back to the office cabin with him if his dad showed up unannounced.  
  
  
Dylan crawled onto the bed, flipping over onto his back to watch Jordie pull his shirt over his head. Dylan was very into Jordie’s chest and shoulders and had become more and more interested in his arms as well, muscular and tattooed. Jordie was used to being with people who were also tattooed, but Dylan’s entire body was bare, and there was something to that as well, to that pureness.  
  
  
He slid onto the bed after Dylan, hands finding the back of Dylan’s neck to pull him into a kiss. He had already decided he would take this slow for Dylan. He was still unsure of the way Dylan would react, especially since he knew Dylan was still a little emotional. He wanted to make sure he was as relaxed as possible.  
  
  
Dylan didn’t get the memo, already pushing at the waistband of Jordie’s shorts, struggling to get his own shirt off over his head.  
  
  
“Give it time, baby,” Jordie said, gently pushing his hands away. “There’s no rush tonight.”  
  
  
“Alright,” Dylan said, tentatively. His hands found Jordie’s chest instead, letting himself settle into making out for a while. Jordie was obsessed with kissing Dylan. With his mouth in general. He was much more confident as they spent more time in bed together, and Jordie relished in watching that confidence bloom.  
  
  
He was already getting soft, sexy little noises out of Dylan, and Jordie let his hands slip down Dylan’s back, helped him readjust on top of him a little, so his hands had free range to slide over Dylan’s butt, round and firm under his shorts. It gave Dylan enough purchase to grind down on one of Jordie’s thighs.  
  
  
“Alright, alright,” Jordie said, grabbing his hips to still him. “I’m glad you’re eager.”  
  
“When am I not?” Dylan asked. Jordie laughed. It was a good question. Dylan didn’t have a whole lot of patience in bed. Jordie was hoping he could help develop a taste for it.  
  
  
“Just wanted to check in here with you. You feeling okay?”  
  
“Yes, yes I feel great,” Dylan said, grinding down on his thigh again, as though to show him.  
  
  
“What I want to know is how much you like this. I know some people enjoy being fingered more than others. I want to know what you like, so we’re on the same page.”  
  
  
“Oh,” Dylan said, looking almost confused by the question, turning a little pink. “I’m not sure how much experience I have with just...you know, just fingers.”  
  
  
Jordie was frustrated, though not surprised by hearing this, but needed confirmation. “You’ve had anal sex before,” he said, leading.  
  
  
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “But um, the fingering was just like, prep. For the sex.”  
  
  
“Good lord,” Jordie said, not able to hold in his exasperation. “That little shit didn’t finger you?” Jordie had a hard time imagining a sex life — especially with a long-term partner — that didn’t include the kind of intimate, almost one-sided selfless pleasure giving that digitally stimulating your partner could provide. He hated thinking about Tyler in a moment like this where he was alone with Dylan about to have sex, but he couldn’t help it. Tyler was shameless about how much he loved, and demanded, being fingered. Having one hundred percent of the attention focused on him. He didn’t want to be with Tyler again, but if he could impart some of that ability to advocate for your own needs onto Dylan, he was there for it.  
  
  
“We just, you know, if we were doing that, then we had sex pretty much as soon as I was ready.” Dylan sounded embarrassed about that fact, which Jordie hated.  
  
  
“I have so many problems with that,” Jordie told him. “Okay, we’re going to go so slow, and we’re going to find out what you like tonight, alright? And we’re never going to talk about your ex-boyfriend in bed again.”  
  
“I agree to all terms,” Dylan said, a little more confidence coming back. Jordie kissed him again, then started working kisses down his neck. When he got to his shirt collar, the shirt came off. The kisses continued south, slow and steady, stopping at both of Dylan’s nipples before continuing on. At Dylan’s waistband, his shorts and underwear were removed too.  
  
  
Dylan was hard and flushed all over, and Jordie could tell he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. He clenched them at his sides, looking up at Jordie, up on his knees now, for what he was going to do next. The last time they’d gone grocery shopping, Jordie had bought lube and condoms, and carefully ignored Dylan in the store the entire time they were there, so the word of Jordie's condom buying didn’t make it back to Dylan’s dad. It was a small town. He fished the lube out of the dresser, condom box still sealed.  
  
  
He settled between Dylan’s legs, hiking one of his legs over his left shoulder. He kissed the soft skin of Dylan’s inner thigh and felt his whole body shiver. As far as Jordie was concerned, he could have an orgasm almost any time. The real magic of sex was the pleasure you could bring your partner, the reactions you could make them have. Jordie didn’t need Dylan to admit that Connor was kind of shitty in bed. The reactions he’d gotten from Dylan throughout the course of their relationship told him enough.  
  
  
He watched Dylan’s hand flex in the sheets again and reached up to grab it, to settle it on the back of his neck. Dylan threaded his fingers through Jordie’s hair, and their eyes met, steady and trusting. Dylan nodded at him that he was ready, and Jordie uncapped the lube to dispense some on his fingers. He warmed it up between his fingers quick and dipped his head down to catch Dylan’s dick in his mouth, carefully sucking slowly on the head while his fingers very slowly circled his hole.  
  
  
Dylan gasped, and Jordie reached his free left hand up blindly under the leg that was over Jordie’s shoulder and found Dylan’s wrist. Dylan twined their fingers together. Jordie gave his hand a squeeze.  
  
  
He hadn’t pushed in yet, just let Dylan get used to the feeling of his fingers being there. He sucked the head of his dick lightly. This wasn’t really about oral, but it helped to have a little distraction when getting going.  
  
  
Finally, Jordie felt Dylan take a deep breath and force himself to relax a little, and he pressed one finger in, just up to his first knuckle. Dylan let out a shaky breath, and Jordie pulled his mouth off of his dick for a moment. “You okay, baby?”  
  
  
“Uhh, yeah,” Dylan said, tentatively.  
  
  
“Sometimes it takes a little getting used to.”  
  
“I know how to get used to stuff in my butt, thank you very much,” Dylan said, rolling his eyes at Jordie. He laughed. Okay. Maybe he was being a little too precious about it.  
  
  
He inched one finger in, little by little, pulling out and pressing back in, over and over, very slowly. He felt Dylan’s body relax from a tense coil to butter, slightly uncomfortable grunts turning into soft gasps as it started feeling good to him.  
  
  
“Keep going,” Dylan said when Jordie looked up at him. Jordie gave his hand a squeeze and gently began working in his second finger.  
  
  
The second finger went faster, and when Jordie quirked his fingers a little, Dylan let out a low deep moan, hips finally pushing back onto Jordie’s fingers. That was what Jordie was looking for — the difference between “this feels fine,” and “this feels good.”  
  
  
He worked on keeping his thrusts slow and even, Dylan’s hips working to get the perfect angle, the perfect slide. Jordie focused on taking in and remembering every little thing that made Dylan gasp, or made his breath shake.  
  
  
The blowjob was ancillary, but still important, helping Jordie gauge where Dylan was. He’d sucked Dylan off enough times at that point to feel pretty confident in his tells, and he knew Dylan was getting close when his moans got higher, and his stomach muscles trembled.  
  
  
He sped up his fingers and focused his mouth back on the head of Dylan’s dick, his orgasm both familiar and novel to Jordie when he finally came.  
  
  
Dylan finally dropped his hand from the back of Jordie’s neck, his whole body warm and loose after his release. Jordie detangled himself from between Dylan’s legs, slowly letting his fingers slide from inside Dylan with a gasp. He slid his shorts down just enough to get his dick out, hard and eager from twenty minutes of the gorgeous sounds Dylan kept making.  
  
  
Dylan reached up to help him, but Jordie softly pushed his hand away. It didn’t take much to make him come, covering Dylan’s stomach.  
  
  
“I coulda helped you out with that,” Dylan told him, eyes sleepy, expression soft and relaxed. Jordie smiled down at him.  
  
  
“The whole point was that this was only about you,” Jordie explained. “Speaking of you, how did that feel?”  
  
  
He cleaned up Dylan with his t-shirt, hovering over him until Dylan dragged him down, pinning himself under Jordie’s heavy body. Dylan made a soft contented sound in the back of his throat. Jordie adjusted them so that Dylan could settle into his side, and pulled the blankets over them, a chill from the air conditioning and the upstairs fan that they never turned off finally settling in.  
  
  
“That was fucking incredible,” Dylan said, eyelids heavy, the smile on his face lazy and dumb.  
  
  
“Yeah, you liked it?” Jordie asked. Clearly, Dylan had liked it. He just wanted to know what about it he’d enjoyed so much.  
  
  
Dylan just nodded into Jordie’s chest, and Jordie decided not to push it.  
  
  
They napped for a while, and then Dylan got up to do some chores around the resort. They took a speedboat out late that evening after all the watersports were done, and watched the sunset over the water, sipping beers and eating late night snacks, Juice asleep on the blanket Dylan had brought for him. Jordie thought that he couldn’t be happier than he was then, up in the woods, with a boy he was falling in love with and his dog at his side. If someone had given him an ultimatum in that moment, he would have quit hockey to stay right there with Dylan forever.  
  
-

 

Weekends were the busiest for Dylan. The customers were needy and plentiful, and Dylan’s dad had the highest chance of just showing up unannounced. It was Saturday, and they’d gotten into the habit of waking up early enough for morning sex. Dylan rode his fingers in a performance that seemed very targeted to his “I want your dick in me” campaign that Jordie had already decided had completely worked; his mind was now just occupied with how to make it nice for Dylan.  
  
  
Jordie was almost fifty pages into his fantasy novel, but he had no idea what was going on. Something about magic and royalty, and time travel, and flying dragons. There were rebels who were going to overthrow the tyrannical government, he thought maybe, and it just made him want to watch Star Wars instead of keep reading. A novel was maybe biting off more than he could chew.  
  
  
Instead, he played Fortnight. After dying what felt like a thousand times and never making it top ten, he shut off his Xbox and called his brother. He’d been living in a bubble, a snow globe, and had barely had any human contact outside of Dylan for way too long. Jamie picked up on the second ring.  
  
  
“How’s paradise?” Jamie asked him. Jordie could hear a sitcom laugh track in the background. It sounded like Jamie was home in Dallas, where he was supposed to be according to the shared family Google calendar they started using last year after Jamie got a girlfriend, and Jordie got traded. Summers were getting more complicated.  
  
  
“Basically perfect. A little cloudy. I’m...not excited to leave.”  
  
“And your boy?” Jamie asked, getting straight to the point. Jamie had sent Jordie a lot of texts trying to mine information about Dylan. Jordie texted back sparsely.  
  
  
Jordie smiled to himself. “Dylan’s good.”  
  
  
“Your tone of voice makes it sound like you’re banging him finally, so congrats on that.” Not all conversations with his brother were productive. In fact, few were.  
  
  
“Actually—”  
  
  
“Actually?” Jamie asked, sounding very confused. “Actually what.”  
  
“Actually, I don’t know. We’re taking our time.”  
  
  
“Have you ever hesitated to stick your dick into someone before?” Jamie was accusatory, but also frighteningly accurate.  
  
“Dylan is different,” Jordie said. “He’s special. He’s just, I don’t know. Young. A little heartbroken.”  
  
  
“Young?”  
  
  
“He’s twenty-one.”  
  
  
“Oh no,” Jamie said. “He’s a baby. Is he a virgin? Is that why?”  
  
“He’s not a virgin, Jesus, Jame.”  
  
  
“I’m just saying. I’m getting distinct... _feelings_ off of you right now.”  
  
“I’m falling in love with him,” Jordie admitted, saying the words out loud for the first time. “I love him.”  
  
  
“Fuck. Jord, you’ve made better decisions in your life.”  
  
“You don’t exactly get to choose.”  
  
  
Jamie paused. He was in love. Jordie knew that his relationship had taken a lot of logistical finagling if nothing else. “No, I guess you don’t. What are you going to do?”  
  
  
“I have no fucking idea, but I’ve gotta figure something out.”  
  
  
“You going to bring him home with you in July?”  
  
  
“He runs this place. I don’t think he can just take off.”  
  
“Well ask him. I want to meet your young man.” Jamie had taken the entire conversation to say something nice, but there it was. That was his relationship with his brother in a nutshell. They were dicks to each other, but there was no one on earth he loved more than Jamie.  
  
  
They hung up, and Jordie settled back into playing video games.  
  
  
-  
  
  
A little after four, it started raining, a proper thunderstorm opening up in the sky. Dylan showed back up at Jordie’s cabin in the evening soaking wet, clothes clinging to his body. Jordie pulled him upstairs under the guise of drying him off and putting him in pajamas, but the moment he pulled Dylan’s clothes off, he wrestled him back on the bed, tickling his sides, and sliding down to kneel on the floor in order to suck him off.  
  
  
Dylan returned the favor, the warm inside of his mouth maybe Jordie’s favorite thing in the entire world, and thought about bringing up fucking him. Dylan was obscene and ridiculous, moaning around Jordie’s dick even though his own had already been taken care of, and Jordie came, thinking of what it would feel like to fuck Dylan, feeling the vibrations of Dylan’s mouth on his dick.  
  
  
Dylan pulled on one of Jordie’s Habs t-shirts, which Jordie had already decided to let him keep, and a pair of his own shorts he’d left there at some point, and they headed downstairs. Jordie had bought steaks that they were going to grill that night. Grilling was out, but he had found a cast iron pan that looked to actually be in good shape and got to work prepping the steaks and the broccoli he was making on the side. He tossed a couple foil-covered potatoes into the oven.  
  
  
Dylan sat at the breakfast bar overlooking the small kitchen, chatting about one of the neediest families he’d ever had stay there that he couldn’t wait to see leave the next day. Jordie mentioned that he’d talked to his brother, got top two in Fortnight, read four more pages of his novel. Surprisingly, Dylan had read the entire series that Jordie was just starting. Usually, he had more free time on his hands when he was up at the lake when he didn’t have ‘someone to entertain,’ as he put it.  
  
  
It was domestic, to share a kitchen with Dylan, even if Dylan wasn’t helping at all. Jordie didn’t really want him to. He just wanted Dylan to relax. He wanted to cook him a solid meal.  
  
  
The steaks were sizzling on the stove, and wouldn’t need much attention for the next few minutes, so Jordie turned his attention to Dylan, leaned across the counter to rest on his elbows. He took one of Dylan’s hands in his. “Little over a week left,” Jordie said, already regretting bringing it up.  
  
  
“Don’t remind me,” Dylan said, his expression already falling.  
  
  
“I hate to think about it too. But we’re going to need a plan, sweetheart.”  
  
  
“What kind of a plan?”  
  
“The plan for what happens next. When I’m going to see you next.”  
  
“Oh,” Dylan said, brightening a little. “I thought you might—”  
  
“Just disappear on you?”  
  
Dylan blushed, ashamed. “Maybe.”  
  
“Do you even know how I feel about you?” Jordie asked him. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to tell Dylan he loved him, but if he needed to, he would.  
  
  
“Maybe,” he said again.  
  
  
“The way I feel about you eclipses everything I’ve ever felt before. And I’m not walking away from that.”  
  
  
“Well, ditto,” Dylan said. “The feelings thing. Ditto.” Dylan was chatty as all hell, but not really about his feelings. Jordie felt good getting this much out of him. He brought Dylan’s hand up to his lips to kiss his knuckles.  
  
  
“What’s your summer look like. Are you stuck here literally the entire time?”  
  
  
Now Dylan was smiling again. “I had all of June. Ryan is doing July. August is gonna be Matt, but he’s nineteen, so Ryan and I are also going to trade off a couple weeks to help him out and make sure he doesn’t fuck it up. At some point, I’m going to go see my mom in Wisconsin, I guess. We haven’t made solid plans yet.”  
  
“I go home in July, to Victoria island. My whole family will be there. Jamie, my sister Jenny, their significant others. My parents. Do you want to come with?”  
  
  
“That sounds intimidating.”  
  
  
“It might be,” Jordie said. “But I know Jamie wants to meet you. And I don’t want you out of my sight. I’m driving out there, just as soon as I check out here.”  
  
“Can I think about it?” Jordie wanted an immediate and absolute, yes, but he got how big of an ask it was.  
  
  
“Of course,” Jordie said. The timer on his phone went off, and he tucked the pan of steaks into the oven for a bit.  
  
  
Dylan played tug with Juice while Jordie finished making dinner. He cut up a piece of the bigger one of the steaks for Juice, and preened at the look on Dylan’s face.  
  
  
“This is like, restaurant quality,” Dylan said.  
  
  
“Just here to impress you,” Jordie said. “Is it working?”  
  
“Obviously.” Dylan had cooked for him too, but Jordie could only eat so much Kraft Dinner. When Jordie had been twenty-one, he hadn’t known how to cook a steak either. He tried not to dwell on the age difference much. Except when they had gone out with Mitch, Jordie barely noticed it. He suspected that when they spent more time with other people, it may become more apparent. He didn’t care. All Jordie wanted was for Dylan to smile the way he was smiling sawing into his steak with the terrible knives this little cabin had. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?  
  
  
-  
  
  
  
“Five more days,” Dylan said on Tuesday morning, once again eating all the food in Jordie’s cabin, a bowl full of cereal in front of him at Jordie’s kitchen table.  
  
  
“We gotta start making the most of it,” Jordie said, already finished with his cereal. To be fair, Dylan was on his second bowl.  
  
  
“What does that mean?” Dylan asked, eyebrow raised. “You have plans?”  
  
“I have at least one plan.”  
  
“It’s like pulling teeth,” Dylan complained. “C’mon.”  
  
“Did you still want me to fuck you?” Jordie asked, trying to be all casual about it.  
  
  
Dylan dropped his spoon, splashing milk across the table. “Shit, shit,” he said, grabbing napkins from the center of the table to mop up the mess. “And yes, obviously, duh, right now?”  
  
  
“No not right now,” Jordie said, rolling his eyes. He didn’t think he could get hard right then if he wanted to. Dylan had made him come less than ten minutes beforehand. “I was thinking...maybe in your bed. Motivated selfishly by wanting to use that huge shower you’ve got in your cabin.” They had never taken a shower together because they literally wouldn’t both fit into Jordie’s tiny shower stall. It remained the worst part of the trip.  
  
  
“Yes,” Dylan said. “Today?” He was so damn eager, and Jordie was so ridiculously into that. It was just refreshing, for someone to wear their heart on their sleeve as much as Dylan did.  
  
  
“Yeah, we can today. What do you need to get done?”  
  
“Basically nothing. It’s Tuesday.” But he did actually have laundry to run and a cabin to clean out, which took him the morning. Jordie cleaned up his own cabin while Dylan was gone, prepping a load of laundry for that day or the next, maybe. He couldn’t take his mind off of Dylan. What he would look like, what he would sound like. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure why he’d made them wait for so long, but the longer they waited, the bigger of a deal it was. He didn’t want to wait until the last night. He wanted time to do it over and over before he had to leave.  
  
  
Dylan texted him finally when his chores were done. It was mid-afternoon, the sun high and bright in the sky. Juice was tired from running around at the shoreline, and he left him in his cabin to nap. He let himself into Dylan’s cabin the back way, finding Dylan flopped face first on the living room couch, worn out from doing his chores at double time. He rolled over, looking sweaty and amazing, cheeks with a high flush on them.  
  
  
“Shower first?” Jordie asked. It was a hot day, and Jordie was feeling sticky and gross too. Dylan’s cabin had a better air conditioner than Jordie’s had, which was another plus in the “fucking in Dylan’s cabin” pro/con list. Dylan nodded and headed down the hallway, stripping off in the hall so he could throw his clothes into his room before heading into the shower. Jordie copied him.  
  
  
Dylan fussed with the shower knobs, and Jordie pressed up behind him, the zing of excitement running up his back. He wanted nothing more than this, just some time alone with Dylan, making him smile and feel good. He knew that this was going to disappear into thin air more quickly than he wanted.  
  
  
In the shower, they rinsed off more than getting anything real accomplished. Jordie pressed Dylan up against the wall for slow, wet kisses, trying to memorize the feeling of Dylan’s body against his own. Dylan’s strong hands held Jordie’s jaw in place, and when they finally broke apart, dazed, Jordie couldn't think about anything other than the required necessary steps between here and Dylan’s bed. First, he turned the shower off.  
  
  
Dylan found towels for them, and they dried off haphazardly. When Dylan went in to kiss Jordie again, he made a face and shook his head. “Nope, no wet beard. Dry that sucker out,” and Jordie spent a little more time on the endeavor. When Dylan approved of the dryness of his beard, he led Jordie back into his room.  
  
  
Jordie loved that room, Morgan Rielly poster and all. He took his eyes off of Dylan for one second to fish lube and a condom out of his pants, and when he turned back, Dylan was laid out on the bed, legs already spread, no shame. Just a soft blush on his cheeks, a smile creeping up one side of his face.  
  
  
Jordie shook his head at him, climbed onto the bed to knee walk over to him.  
  
  
“What?” Dylan asked, pushing himself up onto his elbows.  
  
  
“Can’t believe we’re doing this. Can’t believe we haven’t yet. Can’t believe how beautiful you look.” Jordie just looked at Dylan and felt so fucking fond of him.  
  
  
“You’re very sappy,” Dylan pointed out, and Jordie just shrugged, leaned in to kiss him. Dylan kept Jordie between his spread legs, a reminder of what he was looking to do here, and slowly manhandled Jordie with him as he laid back against the pillows so that they were flush together.  
  
  
It was far from the first time they had been naked together, and Jordie liked how comfortable he felt against Dylan, Dylan’s big hands gripping his shoulders or his neck or his ass. But he couldn’t fully relax into the situation. Maybe after they’d had sex a few times, but not yet.  
  
  
Dylan’s legs wrapped around him, pulling his hips right up against Jordie's. “Alright, alright,” Jordie said, breaking away from Dylan. “I get the hint.” He grabbed the lube, started working Dylan open. It was hard not to get distracted by this bit when Dylan had come to enjoy it so much, but Dylan batted his hand away after a few minutes, relaxed as he was going to get.  
  
  
Dylan was already opening the condom the second Jordie made a move to look for it, and it was Dylan who slid it onto Jordie, catching his gaze and licking his lips. Jordie could probably blame whatever that move was on porn, but he wasn’t mad about it. With one hand on the center of Dylan’s chest, Jordie pushed him flat on the sheets, while he lined himself up with the other.  
  
  
He went slow. It was probably not good form to think about in the moment, but he knew he had a bigger dick than Connor, and pushed in millimeter by millimeter, watching Dylan’s face as he tried to relax around it. Dylan told him to back off a couple times, but never fully let him pull out.  
  
  
Finally, finally, Jordie was all the way in, Dylan tight around him. He rested his forehead against Dylan’s as Dylan gripped his biceps, placing kisses across his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, his lips. He’d let Dylan settle a little before he started any thrusting action. But first, he needed to check in.  
  
  
“You okay, baby?” he asked, quiet as the room around them was. Being in Dylan’s bed added a layer of intimacy that Jordie was into. Being in his cabin almost felt like neutral ground. He liked Dylan’s dirty clothes on the floor and phone charger on the side table.  
  
  
Dylan just swore. “Fuck, yes, I’m fine, I’m good, I’m good.”  
  
  
“Dylan Strome?” Jordie asked him, holding his gaze.  
  
  
“What, what?” he asked back impatiently. Jordie could tell from the way he was trying to shift his hips under him that he was ready to go.  
  
“I just wanted to tell you that I love you,” Jordie said and watched as Dylan’s face went from impatient to surprised. Jordie hadn’t exactly been planning on saying it. If he’d thought it through at all, he wouldn’t have — what an awful time to get an “I really care about you, too” back. But Dylan’s face broke open in a smile, and he took Jordie’s face in his hands to kiss him, urgent and deep.  
  
  
“Me too,” Dylan said, shaking a little bit. “I love you too,” he said, sounding just as surprised by his own words as Jordies. Jordie kissed him a few more times before the rocking of Dylan’s hips got a little impatient, and Jordie decided to get the show on the road, his thrusts staying languid as Dylan kept kissing him, deep and true.  
  
  
They started getting a rhythm going, every one of Jordie’s decisions driven by trying to make Dylan moan again, longer, louder. Dylan’s back arched, his hand finding his dick as he stroked himself in time to Jordie’s thrusts. He swore a string of f-words as he came, all of the tension releasing from his body. Jordie got a few more thrusts in before pulling out and finishing himself off on Dylan’s stomach. Dylan was already messy. He figured he wouldn’t mind.  
  
  
Dylan just pulled them back together, not at all done with kissing Jordie. “I love you,” Dylan said, the words fresh and exciting and beautiful still. Jordie wanted them tattooed on him, in Dylan’s writing, forever.  
  
  
“I love you too, sweet thing,” he said back. He was curled over Dylan, sucking kisses into his neck, when they heard footsteps coming down the hall. Jordie snapped back to look Dylan in the eyes, fear all over his face.  
  
  
“Hey, kiddo,” a man’s voice said, pushing open Dylan’s cracked bedroom door to find the two of them together, curled up, naked, Jordie very clearly on top of his son. Dylan’s dad looked like he wanted to die, and snapped the door shut again.  
  
“Goddamnit, Dylan, are you fucking kidding me? Again?” he shouted through the door. Dylan was shaking and pushing Jordie off of him, trying to wipe come off his stomach with the sheet.  
  
  
Jordie could only hear one word — again. What did he mean, _again?_  
  
  
“He better not be another customer,” Dylan’s dad roared through the door. “You have ten seconds to come out of there.”  
  
Dylan was pulling clothes on, but Jordie was frozen. _Another customer?_  
  
  
“Please get dressed,” Dylan begged, and Jordie found his clothes from earlier, pulling them on automatically. Dylan wouldn’t look him in the face. When he was clothed, Dylan bit his bottom lip and opened the door.  
  
  
“Do you rent a cabin here?” Dylan’s dad shouted in his face, as soon as the door opened. Jordie was still trying to get a handle on what was going on. “Do you rent one of my cabins?”  
  
  
“Yes,” Jordie finally said not sure what else he could say.  
  
  
“Then pack up and get the fuck out, no refunds when you fuck my son. You have twenty minutes.”  
  
  
Jordie grabbed his sandals and didn’t even put them on before running out of Dylan’s cabin, hearing the roar of Dylan’s dad’s voice as he continued to shout at his son. Jordie wanted to protect him, but also...another customer. It rang in his head.  
  
  
He made it back to his cabin, and Juice could tell something was wrong from the energy Jordie was giving off. He grabbed his Xbox, he shoved the laundry he’d gathered earlier into his suitcase. He packed up Juice’s stuff and threw it all in the car. He didn’t have time for a once-over. He’d just buy a new whatever-he-left-behind.  
  
  
He left the key in the door and drove away.  
  
  
He stayed calm until town when he pulled over on the side of the road to heave a sob. He didn’t know why he hadn’t been more careful with his heart, when he knew how temporary this would be, even in a best-case scenario.  
  
  
His phone started blowing up, text after text. He didn’t want to read them at all, but he couldn’t help it.  
  
  
_I have a lot to explain to you_  
  
_It sounds worse than it is_  
  
_I’m so, so sorry about my dad I had no idea he was showing up_  
  
_Obviously_  
  
_He’s gone. Has to work in Toronto in the morning._  
  
_Please come back_  
  
_I love you_  
  
_I love you_  
  
  
Jordie kept watching the text come in, one buzz after the next until his phone started ringing in earnest. He wasn’t sure Dylan had ever called him before. He answered.  
  
  
“Please come back, baby,” Dylan said, voice sounding wrecked. Jordie wasn’t sure Dylan had ever called him baby before.  
  
  
“I want to,” Jordie said, honestly.  
  
  
“I can explain what my dad was yelling about. It’s really not what it sounds like. Please come back. Please.” When it came down to it, Jordie was just weak for Dylan, easy for him.  
  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m headed back. Forty minutes out.”  
  
“Oh, thank god,” Dylan said. “I love you.”  
  
  
Jordie sighed. All he wanted was to be curled back up in their afterglow, no traumatizing man yelling at him to get the fuck away from the boy he loved. Still, what had happened didn’t change anything about how he felt about Dylan. “I love you too,” he said. He hung up, and swung the car around, headed back toward the resort.  
  
  
When he got back, Dylan was sitting on the bench outside the office door. He flung himself at Jordie and Jordie caught him, holding him up under his ass. Dylan’s legs wrapped around him. “Fuck, I am so sorry, I’m so sorry.”  
  
  
“It’s okay,” Jordie said, setting Dylan down. Dylan kissed him, his lips still soft from all the kissing they did earlier. It had been about two hours, barely any time at all.  
  
  
“We should talk,” Dylan said. Jordie let Juice out of the car and followed Dylan into the cabin.  
  
  
Dylan sat on the couch, and Jordie and Juice took their spots next to him. Juice flopped across Dylan’s lap, protective. Jordie loved his dog. The silence hung between them. “What’s going on?” Jordie finally asked.  
  
  
“I guess I’ll start with the least fun part, though it’s all, you know, not fun. The resort season starts in May. The first week there I was still feeling pretty...heartbroken about Connor. He kept drunk texting me, like, alternating between nudes and texts about how much he loved Leon. He sent me a string of those the week that the resort opened back up, so I was just feeling, I dunno. Vulnerable. Raw.”  
  
Jordie didn’t hate anyone the way he hated Dylan’s shitty ex-boyfriend. He grabbed Dylan’s hand, laced their fingers together. Dylan gave him a little smile.  
  
  
“There was a guy up here. A novelist. He thought pretty highly of himself. Obviously, it wasn’t...a good situation. He could tell I was in a bad place, and I guess kind of took advantage of that. He was only up for the weekend, but my dad walked in on me blowing him. It was consensual. We didn’t do anything else. My dad kicked him out. Never heard from him again, not that I particularly wanted to. I just wanted someone to notice me. And he did. Sort of.”  
  
  
“You never felt that way about us, did you?” Jordie felt like he’d taken every precaution to make sure that Dylan was happy and in control.  
  
Dylan smiled at him. “My heart was broken open then. When we met, it was already set, casted, healing. Aching a bit, but fixed. With you, it feels whole again. If you’ll still have me.”  
  
  
Jordie couldn’t hold this one guy against Dylan. He’d had his own slutty phase that was way more than one blow job after he and Tyler split. “I love you.”  
  
  
“But?” Dylan asked. Jordie just shook his head.  
  
  
“I love you. I want you.” He leaned over Juice to kiss Dylan again, his boy. His.  
  
  
“Fuck, thank god,” Dylan breathed. Something, for that hour of time, felt so tenuous. Scary. It was a wake-up call. Whatever they had was still wet cement. They needed to be careful. “Okay, now for more bad shit.”  
  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
  
“You can’t stay at your cabin anymore. My dad and I cleaned it out after you left. Kind of. He was too angry to actually get anything done, but he hired a cleaning crew for it for tomorrow.” Dylan rolled his eyes. “If he finds you in the cabin...he’ll call the cops.”  
  
“Should I even be here?”  
  
“He’s coming back up tomorrow. All traces of you need to be gone. So, what I need to do is start calling other resorts, see what I can find, what favors I can call in, so you can stay up here until Saturday.”  
  
  
“Shit. This is a mess.”  
  
“Yeah. But...stay tonight. Please. He has a morning meeting, he’ll be in Toronto until eleven, at least. Won’t be up until at least three.”  
  
  
Jordie thought about just heading back to BC. But his dog was sleeping on Dylan’s lap, and he really wanted at least one more night with him. He nodded.  
  
  
“Okay. I’m going to make some calls.”  
  
  
“I’m going to make some dinner,” Jordie said, standing up off the couch. Juice got up too, then Dylan, who pulled Jordie into a hug, clinging to him, hard. Dylan pulled away with a shaky breath, then took his phone out of his pocket to get started.  
  
  
Jordie made brats on the stove while Dylan called around. Dylan sounded so professional on the phone, asking for help. It took him a while, but after an hour, one of the resorts called him back and said they’d just had a last minute cancellation. Jordie could stay until Friday. His relief was thick, heavy around them. He didn’t want to leave.  
  
  
In the evening, they didn’t leave the cabin. They curled up in Dylan’s bed with Juice and watched Netflix on his computer. Jordie wasn’t paying attention to what was on screen. Just to the boy in his arms. The knowledge that it would be different, once he as across the lake. Apparently, it was about ten minutes away by canoe, but he wasn’t going to just run into Dylan when he took Juice on a walk anymore. Or get to makeout quick when Dylan had a pocket of twenty minutes to kill. He hated that idea. He hated the thought of just going home even more.  
  
  
It felt like playing with fire, when he stripped Dylan down late that night, worked him open for the second time that day, pushed into him slowly. But he didn’t want the memory of getting caught to be their only memory of this, of the first time they had sex, the day Dylan’s dad found them. He just loved this boy, wanted all of him, and could feel himself getting a little desperate.  
  
  
He slept fitfully, knowing this was their last real night together at Strome Resort. Jordie’s heart was heavy.  
  
  
-  
  
  
In the morning, Jordie followed the map on his phone to a new resort, Shore’s Edge, which still had cabins, but they were not as cool or beautiful as the Strome A-frames. He got checked in and tipped well for the last minute accommodations. Dylan had said he had to find a new place for one of their guests to stay due to some plumbing issues, so he stuck with the lie.  
  
  
Dylan stayed back at his resort, waiting for his dad to come back. He got the tip of the iceberg when it came to his dad’s anger. Dylan was pretty sure he was just angry because Jordie was a customer, and not because he was a stranger in his house fucking his kid, but Jordie was pretty sure it was a combination. Dylan’s first boyfriend had been a kid who’d grown up on the lake. He was a known quantity, even if he was a piece of shit if Jordie had anything to say about it. Jordie, on the other hand, was no one.  
  
  
When Jordie had come up to Dylan’s resort initially, he’d craved this. The solitude of being in the wilderness with no one to bother him. Maybe he hadn’t considered how unrealistic it was. He’d been on a team his whole life. He wasn’t just used to being around other people, he was used to being around thirty other people. Constantly. Dylan had given him the choice to make a connection with someone. And now Jordie didn’t have any choices.  
  
  
The last four days of his trip were shitty and unsatisfying. He still saw Dylan but in smaller doses. Since he had to canoe to see Jordie, he also had to canoe home at night. He didn’t stay over. Jordie just played video games, hung out with his dog. Slept alone. He read three more pages of his novel, but now that he knew Dylan loved them, all he could think about was Dylan.  
  
  
Thursday night, Dylan’s older brother showed up in a rusty old Honda. Dylan hadn’t been completely sure when Ryan was going to make his appearance, and Jordie was a little disappointed that it was the last night. He’d had plans for their last night together.  
  
  
Still, he wanted to meet at least one of Dylan’s brothers. Dylan picked him up at the end of the Shore’s Edge dock in a speedboat, and he followed Dylan up the familiar path to Dylan’s cabin. For the first time, Dylan’s cabin smelled great when Dylan opened up the back door.  
  
  
“Back already?” Ryan called from the kitchen. “Thought you’d stop to bang or something.”  
  
“You mean we had time to bang?” Dylan asked, leading Jordie in the kitchen. He’d grabbed Jordie’s hand as soon as they’d entered the cabin and gave it a reassuring squeeze.  
  
  
“Dinner’s almost ready but-“ Ryan said, turning around from the stove. “What the shit, Dylan. Your Jordie is Jordie fucking Benn?”  
  
  
Jordie though “Jordie fucking Benn” could be his name at this point.  
  
  
“It didn’t seem important?” Dylan said, and Jordie loved him for that.  
  
  
Ryan sighed. “I feel three hundred percent weirder about this now,” Ryan said, wiping his hands on a towel and holding one out to Jordie. No “nice to meet you.” Just the handshake.  
  
  
“Some people don’t recognize him right away you know,” Dylan argued.  
  
  
Ryan raised an eyebrow at that. “Meaning...you didn’t recognize him…?”  
  
  
“He trashed the Habs defense in front of me. That’s how much he had no idea who I was,” Jordie said. Not to get ahead of himself, but it would make a great speech at their wedding.  
  
  
Ryan cracked up. “And he didn’t end up in the bottom of the lake? This is incredible. He shits on your hockey to your face and you still like him. Maybe I am okay with you, Benn. You two idiots clearly belong together.”  
  
  
The smile on Dylan’s face at that last statement made Jordie’s heart burst. He pulled Dylan flush to him by the hips, kissed him on the temple.  
  
  
“Hey. No gross stuff,” Ryan said, as he turned back toward the kitchen counter to plate up the burgers he made.  
  
  
They ate at the table, Ryan passing bits of his burger to Juice, who Jordie was finding out loved Ryan just as much as he loved Dylan (his love could be bought) and Jordie largely listened to Dylan and Ryan catch up. Ryan had been in New York but had moved home at the end of June, hence why he hadn’t been able to help Dylan with the resort.  
  
  
They had a similar kind of relationship to the one Jordie had with his brother. While it looked to outsiders like they were tearing each other down, there was a lot of deep love there. Jordie liked watching it.  
  
  
He answered all of Ryan’s protective older brother questions. He was honest. Yes, he was thirty. Yes, he was reporting back to the Habs at the end of the summer. Yes, he loved Dylan. They would figure out how to be together, even if they didn’t have a real plan in place at the moment. Ryan still looked suspicious but seemed sated by Jordie’s first round of answers.  
  
  
Jordie’s brain hadn’t stopped thinking about how to make sure he got to see Dylan as much as possible.  
  
  
They played Mario Kart on Dylan’s Nintendo Switch, Dylan sitting in the middle of the couch throwing elbows like he was getting paid for it. Jordie enjoyed himself more than he thought he would. At the end of the night, late, when Jordie could barely hold his eyeballs open any longer, Dylan pulled Ryan aside for a quick whisper conversation.  
  
  
“Okay, if it’s cool with you, I can stay at your place tonight, since Ryan will be here in the morning for check-ins and stuff.”  
  
“Yes,” was all Jordie could say. Dylan canoed them all back carefully since there wasn’t a dock he could leave a speedboat at overnight. Jordie kept hold of Juice, who, after a month of living a lakeside life, had at least figured out it was unavoidable.  
  
  
Their last night together was sad and awful, the sex just pre-mourning the fact that their month together was coming to an end. Jordie didn’t know what to do, just kissed Dylan’s tears away.  
  
  
In the morning, Jordie woke up early, Dylan tucked against him in the small full-sized bed. He wanted to stay forever, but he knew he had to get on the road. He woke them up and made Dylan one last kind-of-shitty omelet that Dylan picked at, too sad to eat.  
  
  
And then it was time to say goodbye. Jordie checked out of his cabin, packed up his car, turned in his key. It was the legitimate way to leave a resort, and Jordie was glad he had at least one of those under his belt for this trip.  
  
  
Part of Dylan’s punishment was staying at the resort for the rest of the summer, supervised by Ryan. They stood by the side of Jordie’s truck, Juice sticking his head out the driver’s side window as Jordie covered Dylan’s face in kisses.  
  
  
“Call me when I'm on the road. I’ll be bored.”  
  
“Text me once you get there. Like, every twenty to thirty seconds because spending the rest of my summer here with Ryan is going to be fucking awful.”  
  
Jordie laughed, kissed him about six more times. Dylan’s phone buzzed. Ryan needed him.  
  
  
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” Dylan said, arms around Jordie’s neck, making no movement toward dropping them.  
  
  
“I can’t either. But I’ll see you soon. I’ll come back on my way to Montreal. You’ll come see me during camp?” Having Dylan come during camp sounded like the biggest distraction he could give himself, but it didn’t matter, he just wanted to see his boy.  
  
“Whenever you want me there.”  
  
“I always want you there,” Jordie said, his voice hoarse with feeling. Dylan just rolled his eyes at him, kissed him again. He finally let go of Jordie to give Juice goodbye pets and let Juice lick basically his whole face. He knew Juice would miss him too. Then Jordie was in the car too, giving Dylan one last kiss out the driver’s side window before pulling out of Shore’s Edge and onto the little country road, his phone in the dash mount telling him where to turn.  
  
-

 

Jordie called Dylan the second he got to his hotel after the first day of driving. He’d been on speakerphone on and off throughout the day, but now he video chatted him, anxious to see his face. If this was day one, Jordie was fucked for the rest of the summer.  
  
  
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Jordie said, Dylan’s smile tiny on his phone screen. His eyes felt numb from staring at the interstate for so long. He had three more days of that to go. The flight would have taken less than four hours, but he needed his car, and he wasn’t about to take Juice on a flight.  
  
  
They talked about nothing, since they’d spent so much time talking already that day, and Ryan hovered in the background, yelling at Dylan to get off the phone for the love of god. Jordie had pity for Ryan. He knew Dylan was being pretty obnoxious. Still, he didn’t know what he’d do if Dylan wasn’t obnoxious.  
  
  
He fell asleep with Juice next to him, alarm set for early, lonelier than he’d felt since he’d left Dallas.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Being back in Victoria was great in a number of ways. He loved his family. He loved seeing his brother and his sister and their significant others. He loved seeing his parents. He loved just being in the town he grew up in, where everyone acted just as proud of him as they were of Jamie.  
  
  
Still, he’d bought a phone case that charged his phone, since most of his day was eclipsed with trying to contact Dylan in some way, shape, or form. His photo library became selfies of Dylan that he saved from their texts, and photos that he sent Dylan.  
  
  
Five days after being home, he and Jamie went to go on a beer run. “You need to do something about this, man,” he said, gesturing to Jordie’s phone in his hands. Jamie had driven, largely because Jordie was in the middle of a text conversation with Dylan. Mitch was up for the week, and Jordie was glad for it, both because it made Dylan happy, and because it supplied Dylan with a lot of stories to tell.  
  
  
“I just spent a month being off my phone. It’s fine that I’m phone-ing a little more now.” He was defensive about Dylan. Protective.  
  
  
“I don’t mean your phone. I mean, decide what you and Dylan are going to do. You don’t get to choose where you spend most of your year, so maybe ask Dylan if he can be in Montreal too.”  
  
“Like, see if he’ll move in with me?”  
  
“Yeah, or maybe just see if he’ll move to Montreal in general. You don’t have to jump to the big guns right away.”  
  
“But if he was in Montreal, why would I want to spend any time driving to go see him when he could just, you know, live where I live. Eat the food in my fridge when I’m on a road trip.” Jordie could never be accused of being afraid of commitment.  
  
  
“Or I guess you could do that.” Jordie could hear the eye roll in his brother’s voice. “What would he do in Montreal. Twiddle his thumbs?”  
  
“Katie figured out how to live in Dallas for you. It’s not impossible.”  
  
  
“Fair.”  
  
“Maybe he could go back to school. He dropped out.”  
  
  
“Okay. That’s a start,” Jamie said. It was a start.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
In August, Jordie flew from Victoria to North Bay, Ontario. Dylan picked him up. Jordie almost cried seeing Dylan’s beat up car in arrivals, but he kept it together. He put his suitcase in the back seat and climbed into the passenger seat.  
  
  
“I’m so fucking happy to see you,” Dylan said, pulling out of the airport. He pulled into the first restaurant parking lot he found, kissing Jordie as soon as he threw his car into park.  
  
  
Ryan gave Dylan a few days off in the middle of the week, and they rented a hotel room. Ryan specifically told them not to come back to the resort, and that was fine by Jordie.  
  
  
They were naked two seconds after checking into their hotel, and fifteen minutes later breathing hard. Jordie missed the feeling of Dylan’s hands on his shoulders, his skin beneath his lips. He couldn’t believe it had been six weeks without him.  
  
  
Being in bed together, even a strange hotel bed, was familiar and comforting. Jordie wasn’t sure he could leave again.  
  
  
“What if you came to Montreal with me,” he asked.  
  
  
“I told you I’d visit.”  
  
“No, I mean, what if you...moved to Montreal with me.”  
  
Dylan pushed himself up on one elbow to get a better look at Jordie. “Like, move in with you?”  
  
“I already have a condo. It’s nice. Maybe you’d like it. All I know is that I don’t know what I’m going to do if I have to face next season without you.”  
  
“What am I going to do in Montreal?”  
  
  
“What were you going to do in Toronto?”  
  
  
“I thought I’d get a job.”  
  
“I don’t want to push you into doing something you don’t want to do, but you could get a job in Montreal. Or not. You could go back to school.”  
  
  
Jordie had never felt more nervous in his life. He couldn’t stand to have Dylan turn him down. But he watched as a smile bloomed over Dylan’s face, small to begin with, then big and cheesy as it met his eyes.  
  
  
“You’re serious,” Dylan said.  
  
  
“Did you think I wasn’t?”  
  
  
“I thought you might just be dreaming out loud.”  
  
  
“Dreaming you’ll say yes.”  
  
  
“Move to Montreal. I don’t speak French. Well, I mean, my French is embarrassing is what I really mean.”  
  
  
“I don’t speak French either.”  
  
  
“Shit, Jord.”  
  
  
“Do you not want to? I know that’s a big jump.”  
  
  
“I want to so much,” Dylan said.  
  
“But?”  
  
“But, I don't even know. But nothing. Let’s do this.”  
  
  
“Are you serious?” Jordie asked, pushing himself up from the bed to his own elbows.  
  
  
“I guess I’m moving to Montreal,” Dylan said, his smile big and dorky, and Jordie kissed him.  
  
  
EPILOGUE  
  
  
Jordie came home in November after a four-day road trip to Florida, a win and a loss under his belt, an assist to his name. He wasn’t sure exactly what was different this season, but he was playing better. He could feel it already. Maybe it was because he was happy.  
  
  
He pushed open the front door of his condo and dragged his suitcase in, Juice attacking him almost immediately. He was glad to have his dog this season, pitbull ban mercifully lifted. He was also glad to have someone who could look after Juice while he was gone.  
  
  
He found Dylan in the office, textbooks spread across his desk, a mug of coffee in his hands. He smiled, put the coffee down.  
  
  
“Good game yesterday,” Dylan said, getting up to kiss him. Having Dylan live with him was a thousand times better than the months they spent separated over the summer, but Jordie still missed him, savored the weight of him in his arms as he pulled him close.  
  
  
They had a homestand coming up, and Jordie was glad to have some time to just be around Dylan, to sleep next to him. He always slept better with Dylan in his bed.  
  
  
The transition had been tricky for Dylan. Dylan’s dad still hated Jordie and didn’t approve of Dylan moving in with someone so quickly, but Jordie hoped time would help with that. Dylan’s mom had come to visit though and stayed through Jordie’s first road trip so Dylan wouldn’t be alone.  
  
  
He was making friends at university, and Mitch had come in October over Thanksgiving break, which had been interesting and wonderful. Jordie knew how big of an ask it was for Dylan to move with him. They’d talked about what would happen if Jordie got traded in the middle of the season, and they were both just praying that it would happen after Dylan graduated. Dropping out and transferring set him back a bit, and he didn’t want to be in school forever.  
  
  
But Dylan seemed happy, his eyes bright, his smile just as big and awkward as ever. And that was all Jordie could ask for.  
  
  
“Where are you at with homework?” he asked. It was late, and he wanted to go to bed. But he would stay up for Dylan.  
  
  
“Almost done. Twenty minutes?”  
  
  
Jordie nodded, kissed him once more. They’d put a couch in the office for times like these when Dylan needed to study, but Jordie didn’t want to be too far from him. He and Juice curled up on the couch, and Jordie found his fantasy novel on the side table where he’d left it, his bookmark not that much deeper into it. But there was no rush to finish it. He had time.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Well, if you made it this far, good on you. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr: thewestishharpooners


End file.
